Applied Ocean Research 112 (2021) 102711

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Applied Ocean Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apor

Design of a rubble mound breakwater under the combined effect of wave

heights and water levels, under present and future climate conditions
Soheil Radfar a, Mehdi Shafieefar a, *, Hassan Akbari a, Panagiota A. Galiatsatou b,
Ahmad Rezaee Mazyak a
a
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
b
Division of Hydraulics and Environmental Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloníki, Greece

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T S

Keywords: Design of coastal structures without considering dependence of environmental variables can lead to over- or
Joint probability analysis under estimation of their cross-sectional dimensions, imposing significant economic costs on marine projects. In
Water level this paper, the design of a conventional rubble mound breakwater at the Makran coasts on the southern coast of
Wave height
Iran has been carried out using a commonly applied, as well as a joint probability approach. The results of these
Extremes
two design methods have been compared. In this regard, joint probability analysis of water level and significant
Climate change
wave height has been performed. For this purpose, first an appropriate threshold was determined using a sys­
tematic and methodological approach, and then using the Copula functions, a joint probability distribution was
fitted. In the next step, the critical point of the rubble mound breakwater design was determined, acting as the
basis of further investigations. The results indicate that the volume of armor and filter layers of the breakwater
are reduced by about 5% and 10%, respectively, which is very economically attractive for engineering projects.
Also, suggestions were made for an appropriate selection of 1- and 50-year tidal levels for the common design
method to be used in the design codes. Finally, the effects of climate change on the overtopping failure mech­
anism of the breakwater were discussed, indicating that a higher freeboard and a lower overtopping discharge in
the new design approach can reduce vulnerability of the structure against climate change effects in the future.

1. Introduction
To produce optimal designs is one of the main objectives of engi­
neering studies and design projects. In addition to meeting the safety
criteria, engineering projects must be designed with reasonable con­
struction and maintenance costs. This requires careful determination of
the forces and parameters affecting the design. Many coastal phenomena
such as overtopping, beach erosion, loading on coastal structures,
coastal inundation etc. are caused by different environmental processes
and variables such as water level fluctuations, waves, currents, and
winds. Due to the stochastic nature of environmental factors, deter­
mining wave height, wave period, and water level for design purposes
always introduces uncertainties in the design of coastal structures.
Maximum values of all hydraulic variables have already been considered
to estimate extreme design conditions, to reduce the probability of
failure of studied coastal structures. However, this approach may result
in over-design of coastal structures. Previous studies have shown that
the main variables influencing the hydraulic loading of coastal struc­
tures are not independent and the assumption of independence between
them causes underestimation of their extreme values (Pugh and Vassie,
1980; Ewans and Jonathan, 2014). On the other hand, assuming total
dependence of these variables could be too conservative (Petroliagkis,
2018). In this regard, to consider dependence between variables in the
design process, some design guidelines suggest taking the 100-year re­
turn period estimate of the dominant variable together with the values
of shorter return periods for the associated variables (Ross et al., 2019).
In addition to coastal structures, most of these considerations are also
applicable to a wide range of other marine structures (Fazer­
es-Ferradosa et al., 2018; Vanem et al., 2019), and more attention needs
to be paid to this area of research.
When considering joint probability analysis in the design of coastal
structures, water level and wave height are often considered as the main
variables (Bahari Mehrabani, 2018). Water level is an important and
critical parameter for estimating hydraulic loading on coastal structures,

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: soheil.radfar@modares.ac.ir (S. Radfar), shafiee@modares.ac.ir (M. Shafieefar), akbari.h@modares.ac.ir (H. Akbari), pgaliats@civil.auth.gr
(P.A. Galiatsatou), a.rezaeemazyak@modares.ac.ir (A.R. Mazyak).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apor.2021.102711
Received 5 November 2020; Received in revised form 15 April 2021; Accepted 6 May 2021
Available online 24 May 2021
0141-1187/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
S. Radfar et al.
as well as their crest height. Accurate evaluation of water level extremes
is vital for the reliable performance of coastal structures during their
service lifetime. The wave height is another critical parameter for esti­
mating the hydraulic loading on the structure, as well as in some of its
main failure mechanisms (Bahari Mehrabani, 2018). From the viewpoint
of a common design approach, wave heights and water levels (combi­
nation of astronomical tide and storm surge) are considered indepen­
dent, rendering a univariate analysis of each of these variables
appropriate to determine extreme conditions; and therefore extreme
values of these two variables are obtained for a given return period.
However, this approach could be quite biased. Due to the high signifi­
cance of this issue, various studies have been conducted on the joint
probability of these two design variables. Didier et al. (2019) found that
the univariate design values of 100-year water level and wave height are
underestimated compared to those extracted from a bivariate analysis.
Yeh et al. (2006), HR Wallingford (2000) and Rodríguez (1999) inves­
tigated the joint probability distribution of significant wave heights and
water levels in Taiwan, UK and Spain, respectively. Chen and Bahari
Mehrabani (Wallingford, 2000) studied the joint distribution function of
significant wave heights and water levels subjected to rising sea levels
for an earth sea dyke section of Thames Estuary flood defense system.
They concluded that in the future environment the crest freeboard re­
duces and the depth limited significant wave height near the toe in­
creases. Chen et al. (Rodríguez, 1999) examined joint exceedance
probabilities and joint probability densities of the two variables at nine
selected stations along the coasts of China. Results indicated that the
empirical method of determining the joint extreme water level over­
estimates the hydraulic conditions at the study sites, making coastal
structure designs less profitable.
In general, the joint effect of wave heights and water levels can cause
significant damages to coastal facilities via the overtopping failure
mechanism. The average overtopping discharge is often regarded as a
critical threshold for assessing the performance of coastal structures
(Bahari Mehrabani, 2018). Damages due to overtopping do not neces­
sarily originate from high or extreme values of concurrent wave heights
and water levels i.e. in regions of high tidal range, excessive overtopping
is predominantly driven by large surges coincident with large spring
tides (Hames et al., 2019). The dependence between wave height and
water level increases where the sea states are more energetic, for
example in typhoon-affected areas (Chen et al., 2019). The Chabahar
region in Iran is a typical example of the aforementioned conditions,
rendering a high dependence between these two variables highly
anticipated. Existing studies show that the area is affected by both sea
and swell waves. The energy of the swell waves is dominant (Akbari
et al., 2019; Golpira et al., 2019). These swells are generated by the
monsoon winds and the waves of the Arabian Sea. In addition to swell
waves, the small width of the continental shelf in the study area has
caused the storm surge to have no significant effects on the joint analysis
of wave height and water level. However, in commonly applied design
methods, the maximum storm surge is considered along with the
maximum wave height, leading to overestimated design quantities.
Therefore, the joint analysis of waves and water levels (combination of
tide and storm surge) can improve the design of coastal structures in
such regions. Several methods have been proposed in the literature to
perform joint probability analysis, including the complete probability
method, the stochastic simulation method, the normal transforms
method, the multivariate extreme value theory, the maximum entropy
model, and the Copula functions (Golpira et al., 2019). In the past
decade, use of Copula functions has become very popular for the esti­
mation of the joint distribution of variables in the fields of offshore and
coastal engineering (Dong et al., 2015; Dong et al., 2016; Zi-shen, 2011;
Fazeres-Ferradosa et al., 2019). The key feature of copulas is that they
allow modelling the marginal behavior and the dependence structure of
random variables, separately (McNeilet al., 2015; Wang and Li, 2018).
This enables one to fit different marginal distributions for each variable
and thus increases the flexibility of joint analysis (Galiatsatou et al.,
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Applied Ocean Research 112 (2021) 102711
2019; Corbella and Stretch, 2013; Mazas and Hamm, 2017; Rueda et al.,
2016).
This paper investigates the joint effect of wave heights and water
levels in the design of rubble mound breakwaters along the Makran
coasts. For this purpose, after introducing the study area (Section 2) and
the methodology (Section 3), data analysis is carried out for wave and
water level data (Section 3.1). Different approaches for performing
extreme value analysis are presented in Section 3.2. Section 3.3 presents
the details and the results of joint probability analysis performed. It
should be noted that The main focus of this paper is to investigate the
effects of using joint probability analysis of wave heights and water
levels on design parameters of a rubble-mound breakwater i.e. the
weight (or size) of its armor units or its crest height, with respect to the
conventional design approach which in fact neglects these effects. The
joint distribution of wave height and period is not examined in this
work, but the relationship between these two variables is modeled by
means of an exponential function. This approach was selected consid­
ering the fact that the wave period is usually conditionally related and
physically constrained by wave height, due to physical mechanisms such
as wave steepness (Toffoli et al., 2010; Gouldby et al., 2014; Serafin and
Ruggiero, 2014). Therefore, in this work the wave height was regarded
as the driving wave characteristic for causing both primary armor layer
instability and overtopping of the studied breakwater. In Section 4, a
sample section of a breakwater is designed based on the results of joint
probability analysis and the results are compared with those produced
by the commonly used design method, based on economic and perfor­
mance criteria. Finally, the main conclusions of this work are drawn in
Section 5. The present study has several innovations with respect to
existing literature. Among these features, the most significant ones are
summarized in: a) The approach used to select independent samples,
taking into account both minimum separation time and the inter-event
level criterion; b) The investigation of several copula families (26
different copulas) for the joint analysis of the wave height and the water
level, compared to case studies conducted so far in the marine engi­
neering field, where limited types of copula functions were fitted to the
multivariate samples; c) The breakwater redesign based on the reduc­
tion of its crest height according to the occurrence probability of
different pairs of wave height and water level. Each of these will be
discussed in detail in the following sections.
2. Study area
This study is conducted at the Makran coasts (Fig. 1), in Iran. The
coasts of Makran form a 1000 km coastal strip along the northern coasts
of Gulf of Oman from Ras al-Kuh, Iran (west of Jask) to Lasbela District,
Pakistan (near Karachi) (Britannica, 2020). The Iranian portion with
640 km of shoreline is extended to Gwadar Bay on the Iran - Pakistan
Fig. 1. The study area at the coast of Makran along with the location of the IOC
station and the Chabahar buoy.
S. Radfar et al.
border (Vaziri et al., 2019). The geopolitical and economic importance
of the Makran coasts has led the Iranian government to elaborate a wide
range of strategic plans for the development of these coasts (Jalili,
2017). Therefore, in the recent years, the construction and development
of coastal structures in this area has increased significantly. The area of
the current study is located at the Makran coasts in the Chabahar bay.
3. Methodology
Fig. 2 presents a schematic diagram of the research methodology
followed in this work. In the first step, it is necessary to collect and
analyze the data (Section 3.1). Water level data (tidal level and storm
surge data) is provided from Intergovernmental Oceanographic Com­
mission (IOC) (see Fig. 1 for the location) (IOC, 2020), and the wave
data (significant wave height and wave period) are obtained from
ECMWF database (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Fore­
casts (ECMWF, 2016)). For water level, harmonic analysis is conducted
to separate storm surge and tidal level components for the purpose of
designing conventional rubble mound breakwaters. Also, a comparison
is made between wave height data from ECMWF and the Chabahar buoy
(see Fig. 1 for the location). In the next step, it is necessary to perform
extreme value analysis (EVA) to estimate significant wave height and
storm surge extremes (Section 3.2). The resulting storm surge and sig­
nificant wave height extremes are used as input for the common design
approach. Also, significant wave height data along with the IOC water
level data is used as input to perform joint probability analysis (Section
3.3). Finally, results produced from the common design method and the
one based on joint probability analysis of marine variables are compared
(Section 4).
Shallow water effects can be influential for the locations limited by
water depth (Young, 1999). Investigation of bed profile changes in the
coasts around Chabahar Bay shows that the width of the continental
Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of the research methodology.
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Applied Ocean Research 112 (2021) 102711
shelf in the study area is minimum. Also, in this area, distances of con­
tours -5, -10, and -20 m CD to the shoreline are 200, 650, and 1300 m,
and the bed slope is more than 1% (Fig. 3). Therefore, because of the
hydrographic conditions near the coast that our breakwater is con­
structed, wave propagation does not include shallow water effects in the
studied depths.
3.1. Available data and data analysis
3.1.1. Water level
Water level fluctuations are decisive parameters in selecting the crest
level of coastal structures. Various factors are involved in determining
the maximum water level in the sea, aiming to determine the crest level
of coastal structures, the most important of which can be classified as
wave setup, storm surge, and astronomical tide. In addition to the above
factors, phenomena such as long-term changes in sea level (caused by
melting of polar ice caps and by thermal expansion of seawater) also
affect water level changes (Update and review of the integrated coastal
zone management studies in the Sistan and Baluchestan province
(Report), 1920). However, such effects are considered less significant for
the study area, and their changes can be ignored in the analysis per­
formed. For the present study, IOC station (Fig. 1) water level data was
used. This data was collected during a period of 8 years (November 2007
to August 2015) with a 6-h time interval. Water level variations during
the 8 years study period are shown in Fig. 4.
Due to the fact that water level changes are the sum of various factors
such as tides and atmospheric constituents, it is necessary to differen­
tiate between the different components of the water level for design
purposes. Because some factors, such as tides, are periodic and pre­
dictable, extreme value analysis has no definite physical meaning for
this information. However, other components, such as the storm surge,
have a stochastic nature, imposing to consider long-term changes of the
S. Radfar et al. Applied Ocean Research 112 (2021) 102711

Fig. 3. Hydrographic map in the coasts around Chabahar Bay (study area).

Fig. 4. Water level variation at the Chabahar station based on IOC data (water level is measured above MSL).

variable in the analysis. Therefore, the water level is initially decom­
posed into tidal and non-tidal components, by means of a least squares
fit method to the amplitudes and phases of different tidal constituents.
The values of tidal components usually does not change rapidly with
latitude and longitude. Therefore, it can be assumed that the main
components of tidal variations are the same in all domains. The main
components of the tide include the diurnal components K1 and O1 and
the semi-diurnal components M2, S2 and N2. In some areas, the diurnal
component P1 and semi-diurnal component K2 are also important,
which can be obtained from the K1 and S2 components, respectively. A
fixed term (Z0) is also considered. This fixed term represents the average
variation in the water level. According to the main components of the
tide, water level variations are calculated as the sum of the tidal com­
ponents and the fixed term. Based on the harmonic analysis (Foreman,

4
S. Radfar et al.
1979), the values of different tidal components and their phases are
obtained (Table 1). As it turns out, the dominant tidal component in the
study area is M2.
An example of the range of tidal level changes compared to the
measured levels in Chabahar station is shown in Fig. 5. As shown in this
figure the tidal level changes have a periodic nature and it is possible to
predict tidal design levels such as Mean Higher High Water (MHHW)
and Mean Lower Low Water (MLLW).
Water level changes due to non-tidal factors are also shown in Fig. 6.
As shown in this figure, the range of changes in the storm surge level
over the 8-year measurement period is more than 30 cm. Based on the
results presented, it can be concluded that the nature of the storm surge
changes is stochastic and unpredictable. Therefore, in order to deter­
mine the design levels of coastal structures due to storm surge, it is
necessary to conduct extreme value analysis. In this regard, a lognormal
distribution was fitted to the surge data, through which the values
corresponding to different return periods can be identified (Fig. 7).
3.1.2. Significant wave height
Significant wave height is another crucial parameter in the design of
rubble mound breakwaters, which is very important in determining the
forces acting on the structure. In this paper, the data is available from
the Chabahar buoy (Fig. 1). Due to the fact that the measurement period
was limited and there are also many gaps in the data which is due to the
failure of the buoy, in addition to this source, wave hindcast data has
also been used. This data is provided from ECMWF (ERA-Interim)
(ECMWF, 2016) that correspond with the available data of water level
monitoring for locations with a spatial resolution of 0.125 [deg] and at a
6-h time interval for an 8-year period (November 2007 to August 2015).
In Fig. 8 significant wave height data from Chabahar buoy and
ERA-Interim model are compared in a two-year period for quality
assessment. Investigation of the time history and wave scatter diagram
shows that for Hs < 1 m the ERA-Interim wave data are slightly
over-estimated compared with the measured data. However, compari­
son of the extreme data with Hs > 1 m, most important for the purposes
of this study, is indeed representative of the accuracy of the hindcast
data. As shown in Fig. 8, an increase in wave height is observed during
May, June and July, which is evident in both datasets, indicating the
effect of summer monsoon waves (southwest waves) (Kumaret al., 2011;
Anoop et al., 2020). As can be seen, the hindcast data represented this
trend quite well and appropriately reflected the maximum wave height
due to the monsoon waves. Also, the statistical comparison of the
measured data and the results of ECMWF-ERA-Interim model shows that
the values of bias, correlation coefficients (CC) and root mean square
error (RMSE) metrics is 0.18, 0.75 and 0.35, respectively (Fig. 9). The
adequacy and accuracy of these metrics is confirmed based on infor­
mation provided in the literature (Armanfar et al., 2019).
3.1.3- Joint data statistics
Table 2 shows the summary of statistics and correlation coefficients
for the available data. There are 11,303 pairs of water level and sig­
nificant wave height data available from November 2007 to August
2015 recorded every 6 h. The distribution of this data is presented in
Table 1
Values of different tidal components and their phases in the study area (M2 is
dominant).
Name Amp. [m] Phase [deg.]
Z0 1.6142 0 and Wahab, 2016; Saeed Far et al., 2018)), 96 h ( (Kapelonis et al.,
O1 0.199 334.62
P1 0.113 335.71
K1 0.3841 341.73
N2 0.1446 139.98
M2 0.6011 155.96
S2 0.2347 184.98
K2 0.0711 180.95
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Table 3. It is quite evident from the box plots of these two variables
(Fig. 10) that WL data shows more dispersion than Hs data and the
median of the box (central line) for this variable is closer to the upper
quartile determining a negatively skewed distribution, while for Hs the
median is closer to the lower quartile and the tail of the distribution
shows positive skewness. For the latter, a large number of data is scat­
tered at the first classes of the range.
3.2. Extreme value analysis
In general, there are two approaches for practical extreme value
analysis: block maxima (BM) and peaks over threshold (POT). In the first
method, the observations are divided into equal length and non-
overlapping time intervals and a maximum value is selected from each
of these intervals or blocks. In the second method, a distribution func­
tion is fitted to independent samples above a sufficiently high threshold
(Jane et al., 2016). Compared to the BM method, the POT method can
take advantage of all useful information in the data leading to more
accurate extreme value estimates, considering that the threshold is
carefully selected (Shao et al., 2019). Determining a suitable threshold
to model its excesses is very important, because this selection can
significantly affect the extrapolated design estimates. A low threshold
increases the bias of the parameter estimates of a fitted distribution
function, due to model misspecification, while raising the threshold
increases the variance of these estimators (Northrop et al., 2017). Se­
lection of a suitable threshold constitutes a balance between the bias and
the variance of the parameter estimates of a fitted distribution (Scarrott
and MacDonald, 2012). In this case, a low threshold of Hs gives more
samples for modeling their probability distribution. However, lower
wave heights, which are less important in the extreme value analysis,
will also be part of the selected samples. An adverse effect of this is that
the extrapolation pattern for extracting the design wave will lead to
inaccurate and unreliable estimates. As a result, parameter estimates
will have lower variance and higher bias. Conversely, high threshold
values can represent extreme waves better, but the number of remaining
samples in this case will decrease, increasing the uncertainty in esti­
mating extreme significant wave heights.
One of the basic assumptions of the extreme value analysis is that
events are independent (Coles et al., 2001) and the samples selected for
the POT method should be such that the data are modeled as indepen­
dent observations (Caires and van Gent, 2008; Ulm et al., 2016).
Therefore, before the threshold is set, it is necessary to select samples
that are independent and identically distributed (i.i.d). Two criteria are
considered in the present study: a) a declustering scheme and b) an
inter-event level. Two declustering methods are commonly used to
obtain independent data from peak values, namely a minimum separa­
tion time (Kapelonis et al., 2015) and a double threshold approach
(Mazas and Hamm, 2011). Minimum separation time is a simple
declustering method, which considers the minimum time interval be­
tween successive peaks, so that the event having a small distance from a
larger one is not selected. This time interval depends on the physics of
the natural phenomenon and must be longer than the typical duration of
the physical processes generating the events (Bernardara et al., 2014).
This time interval should not be too long, so that some independent
events are discarded and therefore, valuable information is missed
(Bernardara et al., 2014). Existing studies proposed several time in­
tervals, such as 6 h ((Malliouri et al., 2021)), 24 h ((Galiatsatou and
Prinos, 2011; Mazas et al., 2014)), 48 h ((Caires and van Gent, 2008,
Galiatsatou and Prinos, 2011)), 72 h ((Bulteau et al., 2013; Saeed Far
2015)).
In addition to minimum separation time, the inter-event level crite­
rion (Pc) is also considered for the selection of two independent events
(Madsen, 2005), which makes the methodology used in the present
study more comprehensive and systematic than the methodology used in
the existing literature (Mazas and Hamm, 2017; Mazas and Hamm,
S. Radfar et al.
Fig. 5. Decomposition of tide component from time series of water level at Chabahar station (levels are measured above MSL).
Fig. 6. Storm surge variation over the 8-year measurement period from 2007 to 2015.
2011; Bernardara et al., 2014). Accordingly, two events are considered
independent when the level between them becomes smaller than the
product of the selected inter-event level and the smaller event value
(Larsén et al., 2017). Runs test has also been used to ensure the inde­
pendency of extreme data. This test is a non-parametric method for
controlling the independency and homogeneity of a time series
(Extreme Value Analysis - User Guide, 2019; Bradley, 1968). Having
controlled different values for this criterion, the value of 0.75 was
selected, because of the highest confidence interval (equal to 88%)
extracted from the independency and homogeneity test performed. The
selected independent events, together with the entire Hs time series and
the defined threshold are shown in Fig. 11.
In previous studies, different approaches have been proposed to
select a suitable threshold, which are categorized and discussed in Liang
et al. (Liang et al., 2019). Two of the most widely used methods are: a)
mean residual life (MRL) plots and b) parameter stability plots. MRL plot
is in fact known as an exploratory technique for threshold selection. In
the plot mean values of the excesses are drawn over different threshold
values, and the threshold is selected to be the lowest level where all the
higher threshold-based mean excesses are consistent with a straight line.
The abovementioned methodology should also consider sample uncer­
tainty to produce reliable results. In the latter, the Generalized Pareto
Distribution (GPD) is fitted over a range of thresholds and then values of
the distribution parameters are plotted against the associated threshold
values and the range in which the values of the distribution parameters
are stable is identified. The lowest threshold above which the MRL plot
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Applied Ocean Research 112 (2021) 102711
is linear and also, for which the shape and the scale threshold stability
plots are stable, is selected as the appropriate threshold (Jane et al.,
2016; Bulteau et al., 2013). Although, there are various statistical and
graphical methods for estimating the threshold value, it should be noted
that a suitable selection of the threshold is also tied to expert judgment
and experiences from similar projects performed in the area of study.
This means that the selected value must comply with the existing con­
ditions in the study area. Based on the experiences of the projects that
have been implemented in the area of Chabahar, in the current study no
threshold is considered for water level data and therefore, threshold
analysis is performed only for the significant wave height. Figs. 12–14
show that a threshold value equal to 1.7 m seems adequate, which was
also confirmed by the results of Kamphuis (2020). In these figures, blue
line demonstrates the generalized Pareto MRL.
3.3. Joint probability analysis
3.3.1. Fitting of joint distributions
Joint probability analysis of the design variables includes the
following steps: 1) Preparation of the input data (i.i.d sample); 2) Fitting
of marginal distributions; 3) Fitting the joint distribution of variables
(copula function); and 4) Interpretation of the joint exceedance curves to
find the critical design values. The Copula concept has been used to
calculate the joint distribution of these variables. The word Copula is
derived from a Latin word “copulare”, which means “to join together”
(Maity, 2018). Copulas are functions that connect or couple multivariate
S. Radfar et al. Applied Ocean Research 112 (2021) 102711

Fig. 7. Lognormal fit on the surge data to find the values corresponding to different return periods.

Fig. 8. Comparison of measurements of significant wave height from Chabahar buoy and results of ECMWF-ERA-Interim model.

distributions to their one dimensional marginal distribution functions
and their one dimensional marginals are in [0,1] (Mazas and Hamm,
2011). Sklar’s theorem (Sklar, 1959) states that if H is a function of a
multivariate cumulative distribution function of random variables xi
(i=1,2,…, d) as H(x1 , ... , xd ) = P[X1 ≤ x1 , ... , Xd ≤ xd ] with mar­
ginsFi (x) = P[Xi ≤ x], then there exists some copula function Csuch that:
H(x1 , ... , xd ) = C(F1 (X1 ) , ... , Fd (Xd ))
Whenever all marginals are continuous, Cis unique. Conversely, if C is a
copula function and Fi (x) is a set of marginal distribution functions, then
the function H is a joint distribution function with marginals Fi (x). The
bivariate copula of two random variables Xand Y that have marginal
distributions u = FX (x)and v = FY (y)can be written as:
C(u, v) = P(X ≤ x, Y ≤ y) (2)
As mentioned earlier, this dependence structure or copula is inde­
pendent of the marginal distributions. In other words, any form of the
(1)
marginal distribution functions can be linked to this joint distribution.
This characteristic of copulas is one of the most important reasons of
their wide range of applications in numerous fields. The use of these

7
S. Radfar et al. Applied Ocean Research 112 (2021) 102711

Farlie-Gumbel-Morgenstern (FGM), Gumbel-Barnett, Plackett,

Cuadras-Auge, Raftery, Shih-Louis, Linear-Spearman, Cubic, Burr, Nel­
sen, Galambos, Marshall-Olkin, Fischer-Hinzmann, Roch-Alegre,
Fischer-Kock, BB1, BB5, and Tawn copulas (Sadegh et al., 2017).
Sadegh et al. (2018) describe the advantages of considering a wide range
of copula functions, and also state that the use of a limited number of
copulas could lead to inaccuracies in the selection of the appropriate
design scenario. This is particularly the case in studies that have so far
been conducted in the marine engineering field, where limited types of
Copula functions were fitted to the multivariate samples. The steps for
constructing the joint distribution function of two variables are as
follows:

1 Measuring the dependency of two variables: before constructing the

joint distribution function, it is necessary to determine the depen­
dence between two variables by calculating the correlation
coefficients.
2 Fitting the marginal distributions: In this step, it is necessary to fit the
marginal distribution to the available data of each variable based on
Fig. 9. Q-Q plot of the measured significant wave height from Chabahar buoy
appropriate goodness of fit measures.
and the results of ECMWF-ERA-Interim model and associated perfor­
mance measures.
3 Estimation of the copula function parameters: There are various
methods to determine the parameters of the copula functions. In this
work maximum likelihood method is utilized.
Table 2 4 Evaluation of goodness of fit: In this step, all selected copula families
Summary of statistics and correlation coefficients. are ranked based on their performance. Five different performance
Water Level, WL Significant Wave Height, Hs metrics are used here, the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), the
[m] [m] Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), the Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency
Number of data 11303 11303
(NSE), the Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), and the Likelihood. The
Mean 0.525 0.377 last three metrics focus on minimizing the residuals between obser­
Standard deviation 0.647 0.452 vations and model simulations. AIC in addition to this, takes into
Skewness -0.385 0.679 account the model complexity and avoids the problem of model
Kurtosis -0.402 -0.323
overparameterisation. BIC accounts for model complexity and
Minimum value -0.323 0.245
Maximum value 3.050 3.085 number of observations in addition to minimization of error re­
Pearson correlation 0.038 siduals. Lower values of AIC, BIC and RMSE and higher values of NSE
coefficient associate with a better model fit (Sadegh et al., 2017).
Kendall correlation 0.023
coefficient
Spearman correlation 0.034
The first result is the evaluation of the dependence between Hs and
coefficient WL, which is presented in Table 4. As can be seen, the p - value for all
correlation coefficients of wave heights and water levels is less than
0.05, so there is a strong evidence against the null hypothesis (Mon­
functions is very efficient, especially when the joint distribution function tes-Iturrizaga and Heredia-Zavoni, 2015); the hypothesis that holds for
of the studied variables is not available (Noh, 2009; Song, 2013). the independence of the two variables (Jane et al., 2016).
Archimedean copulas, meta-elliptical copulas, Plackett copulas, mixed The next step is to fit the appropriate marginal distributions to each
copulas, empirical copulas are common copulas used in engineering of the variables. There are seven different distributions for the present
designs (Dong et al., 2016; Lacaze, 2015). statistical fit, including Weibull, generalized Pareto, gamma/Pearson
In the present work, 26 copula families with up to three parameters type III, log-Pearson type III, lognormal, exponential, and Gumbel.
(Sadegh et al., 2017) are used to analyze the dependence structure of the These distributions are fitted using three different estimation methods:
two marine variables. These copulas are: Gaussian, t, Clayton, Frank, method of moments (MOM), maximum likelihood (ML), and method of
Gumbel, Independence, Ali-Mikhail-Haq (AMH), Joe, L-moments (LMOM). Overall, there are 31 different combinations of

Table 3
Scatter diagram of water level and significant wave height in different classes.
Significant wave height (m)
< 0.5 0.5 - 1.0 1.0 - 1.5 1.5 - 2.0 2.0 - 2.5 2.5 - 3.0 > 3.0 Sum

Water level (m) < 0.00 11 53 16 8 0 0 0 88

0.0 - 0.3 37 143 60 39 5 0 0 284
0.3 - 0.6 58 250 141 81 8 0 0 538
0.6 - 0.9 88 371 222 125 10 0 0 816
0.9 - 1.2 127 544 304 176 14 0 0 1165
1.2 - 1.5 185 755 378 234 34 4 0 1590
1.5 -1.8 214 999 536 321 48 3 0 2121
1.8 - 2.1 175 895 475 297 45 1 1 1889
2.1 - 2.4 161 691 401 249 33 2 0 1537
2.4 - 2.7 96 458 287 158 16 2 0 1017
2.7 - 3.0 28 118 60 46 4 0 0 256
> 3.0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 2
Sum 1180 5278 2880 1735 217 12 1 11303

8
S. Radfar et al. Applied Ocean Research 112 (2021) 102711

Fig. 10. Box plots of water level and significant wave height.

Fig. 11. Selected independent events in the time series of the significant wave height (red dots). (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the
reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Fig. 12. Mean residual life plot for significant wave height data with 95 % confidence bands (black dashed line).

distributions and estimation methods. Investigations showed that based projects that have been implemented in the area of study, a two-
on the metrics chi-squared and Kolmogorov-Smirnov (Fig. 15). As a parameter lognormal distribution with a maximum of 6 m has been
result, based on the statistical metrics and also experiences of the selected for the Hs variable. Also, the normal distribution is fitted to WL

9
S. Radfar et al. Applied Ocean Research 112 (2021) 102711

Fig. 13. Shape threshold stability plot for the significant wave height data with 95 % confidence bands (black dashed line).

Fig. 14. Modified scale threshold stability plot for the significant wave height data with 95 % confidence bands (black dashed line).

The next step in the analysis is fitting an appropriate copula function

Table 4
to the data. The Roch-Alegre copula (Roch and Alegre, 2006) has been
Dependence between the significant wave height and the water level at Cha­
proven to provide the best fit according to statistical metrics. Here, NSE
bahar bay.
and RMSE have been used to evaluate copula fit (their equations are
Correlation type Correlation p- Significant at 5%? presented in (Sadegh et al., 2017)). Values of NSE and RMSE for this
Coefficient value
copula are 0.9997 and 0.1199, respectively. NSE is in [− ∞, 1] and the
Kendall rank 0.053 0.013 Yes best fit is associated with NSE=1. Similarly, RMSE is in [0, 1]and the
Spearman’s rank-order 0.079 0.013 Yes
closer it is to zero, the better the fit is. The formula for the Roch-Alegre
Pearson product- 0.085 0.007 Yes
moment copula function is
{ [ ]1/θ1 }
C = exp 1 − (((1 − ln(U))θ1 − 1)θ2 + ((1 − ln(V))θ1 − 1)θ2 )1/θ2 + 1
data concurrent to the selected extreme wave heights. Distribution pa­
(3)
rameters are calculated using maximum likelihood (MLE) method and
are presented in Table 5. where, θ1 and θ2 are the two parameters of the copula, estimated here at

10
S. Radfar et al. Applied Ocean Research 112 (2021) 102711

Fig. 15. Statistical fit of for the Hs data.

Table 5
Marginal distributions fitted to Hs and WL variables and their parameter
estimates.
Variable Selected distribution 1st parameter 2nd parameter

Hs 2-parameter Lognormal σ = 0.9307 μ = 0.2914

WL Normal σ = 1.7518 μ = 0.5530

0.8176 and 1.1172, respectively. Fig. 16 shows the survival plot for the
pairs Hs and WL.

3.3.2. Determination of design values

One of the illustrative results of the joint probability analysis is the
joint exceedance curve of two variables. Considering Fig. 17, between all
combinations of the wave height and the water level on this contour
(bold black curve) with a certain return period, only one combination is
the “critical point” or the “worst case” of design for a specific failure
mode (i.e. for overtopping). One solution is to control these different
combinations and identify the critical design combination among them.
In this regard, Hawkes et al. (Hawkes et al., 2002) and DEFRA (DEFRA
2005; Hawkes and Svensson, 2006) have proposed a methodology by
assessing the intersection point of the contours of equal response cor­
responding to a defined failure mechanism and the contours of equal
joint exceedance probability of two variables. Fig. 16. Survival isolines derived from Roch-Alegre copula: Blue dots are
In order to assess the joint exceedance probability curve of the wave observed pairs of water level (WL) and associated significant wave height (Hs).
height and water level, first it is necessary to introduce the concept of Marginal cumulative distributions of WL and Hs are plotted on the axes. Isolines
the joint return period. There are several definitions in the bivariate are color coded with joint density levels with blue representing lower densities
analysis (Brunner et al., 2016) for assessing the joint return period. In and red denoting higher densities. (For interpretation of the references to color
engineering projects, where the construction cost is of great priority, the in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
joint AND return period of two variables (TAND ), associated with the
joint exceedance of two variables, is used here (Lerma et al., 2018).
TAND can be calculated as follows:

11
S. Radfar et al.
Fig. 17. Contour of joint exceedance probability and equal response for determining the worst case combination of input variables for overtopping (Hawkes
et al., 2002).
1 nificant wave height at the toe of the structure, g(m/s2 ) = 9.81 is the
TAND = (4)
λ(1 − U − V + C(U, V))
where λ is the Poisson parameter or the average number of extreme
events per year (Mazas, 2019). This parameter is a metric for the se­
lection of a suitable threshold and is calculated asλ = N /K, whereNis the
number of events above the threshold level andKis the duration of time
series in years (Mazas and Hamm, 2017). In the current study it is equal
to λ = 41/8 = 5.125.
It should also be noted that in extreme value analysis the uncertainty
in the extreme estimates increases as the return period increases. The
duration of the time series used for this analysis should also be long
enough to ensure the reliability of the return values (Vanem, 2015). In
the design of marine structures, the maximum return period for which
extrapolation can be performed is equal to four times the duration of the
time series (Vanem, 2015; ISO, 2005). In this study, according to
experience of similar projects implemented in the region (Design report
of the first and second phases of the construction of the Rudik multi­
functional port breakwater (Report), 2012), as well as the available
8-year series of waves and water levels, the resulting design values can
be considered reliable up to a return period of 50-years.
The overtopping failure, as a phenomenon that can affect the per­
formance of the structure during its design life, is important in the
design of breakwaters. Overtopping is mainly dependent on two hy­
draulic parameters, the wave height and the water level. This phe­
nomenon does not necessarily require the coincidence of the extreme
values of the abovementioned variables. But a combination of a high
value of one variable and of a frequent value of the other could also
cause excessive overtopping. Here, the overtopping failure mechanism
corresponding to a return period of 50-years is considered as a design
criterion. To extract the overtopping curve, namely contours of equal
probability of overtopping, it is necessary to define the overtopping
equation. Mean overtopping discharge can be calculated as follows
(Noh, 2009):
[ ( )1.3 ]
q 0.026 Rc
√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅ = √̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅ξm− 1,0 exp − 2.5 (5)
tanα ξm− 1,0 Hs γ f γ β
gH 3s
in which q(m3 /s /m)is the average overtopping discharge,Hs is the sig­
12
Applied Ocean Research 112 (2021) 102711
gravitational acceleration,Rc is the crest freeboard,γf (− ) is the influence
factor for roughness elements on the slope, γβ (− ) is the influence factor
for oblique wave attack, α (∘ ) is the structure slope angle, and ξm− 1,0 is
the surf similarity or breaker parameter, and is determined using the
spectral wave period Tm− 1,0 : ξm− 1,0 = √tan α
̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
2π H
gT 2
s
m− 1,0
Hence, the equation of the response curve as follows:
G = qa − q = 0 (6)
In the above equation, qa is the allowable overtopping discharge. The
allowable overtopping discharges are chosen based on the conditions in
the port adjacent to the area of study (i.e. Shahid Beheshti port of
Chabahar). Based on the recommendation of EurOtop (Van der Meer
et al., 2018) and since in this port there are buildings on the dock behind
the breakwater, the allowable overtopping for the design and service
conditions are assumed 1 l/s/m and 0.01 l/s/m, respectively. In Fig. 18,
according to the methodology described, the curves associated with a
50-year joint exceedance probability and overtopping response are
presented. The coordinates for the tangent point of these two curves,
which actually indicates the worst-case scenario, are as follows:
Hs = 4.85 m WL = 2.59 m
3.3.3. Determination of wave period
Although extremes of wave heights and periods have been consid­
ered by numerous authors, studies performing joint probability analysis
of such variables are rather limited (Hames et al., 2019; Ferreira and
Soares, 2002; Repko et al., 2004; De Waal and Van Gelder, 2005;
Galiatsatou and Prinos, 2008; Masina et al., 2015; Vanem, 2016;
Vanem, 2020). In this study, two methods are used to obtain Hs-Tp
relationship. In the first method (here, it is called high frequency fit or
HFF), the relationship between peak period and significant wave height
can be fitted by an exponential function for the combinations of these
two parameters that have the greatest frequency (Kamphuis, 2020). The
general form of the appropriate equation between wave height and
period is as follows:
T = a (Hs )b (7)
S. Radfar et al.
Fig. 18. Determination of the worst-case combination of wave height (Hs) and
water level (WL) for the overtopping failure mechanism: Orange dot is the
critical point for overtopping; 50-year joint exceedance and overtopping
response curves are plotted as pink and blue lines, respectively; Black dots are
observed WL and Hs. The plot is color-coded to visualize the volume of over­
topping discharge in m3/s/m. (For interpretation of the references to color in
this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
In the present paper, based on the available data, constant values of
the coefficients are obtained as follows: a = 9.946and b = 0.319 (orange
line in Fig. 19). Another method (which is called all data fit or ADF in
this study) is to fit a line based on all the available data (Mangor et al.,
2004), in which the constants in Eq. (7) are calculated as: a = 10.073and
b = 0.188. As can be seen, the difference between these two approaches
is not significant in the area of study. Therefore, the first equation is used
for the purposes of the present study.
4. Design of a rubble-mound breakwater
In this section, a real breakwater is designed using two design ap­
proaches, a conventional one and an approach introducing joint analysis
of the marine variables in the analysis, and results are compared. The
most important parameter in designing a breakwater is its armor design.
There are various relationships to determine the weight of the armor
units of a breakwater’s cross section, among which Hudson (Hudson,
1959) and van der Meer (Van der Meer, 1988) formulae are the most
Fig. 19. Hs-Tp relationship using two different methods; a) HFF method (orange
line) and b) ADF method (pink line). Squares show the five pairs with the
greatest frequency. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure
legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
13
Applied Ocean Research 112 (2021) 102711
common. Among these two, the Hudson formula has been used due to its
simplicity and also its wide applicability in the previous designs of ports
in the southern coasts of Iran (Design report of the first and second
phases of the construction of the Rudik multifunctional port breakwater
(Report), 2012):
ρs g Hs3
W= (8)
Δ3 KD cotα
where ρs = 2.500 t /m3 is the unit weight of armor unit, Δ = ρs /ρw − 1is
the relative density,ρw = 1.025 t /m3 is the unit weight of water, cotα =
2.5is the seaward layer slope, andKD = 3.5is the stability parameter.
According to the calculations performed and considering the wave with
a return period of 50 years, the required armor weight is about 12 tons.
The 75% confidence interval for the weight of the armor is 9–15 tons, in
the current design. The corresponding armor layer thickness is about
1.7 m. Also, the filter layer is considered to be 300 to 800 kg and the
average thickness of the layer is about 65 cm.
In designing the sections of breakwaters, in addition to the design of
the armor, the overtopping criterion should also be checked to deter­
mine the height of the breakwater crest. The formula used to calculate
the overtopping discharge is described in Section 3.3.2. It must be first
investigated whether the design condition (ULS1) is dominant, or the
service condition (SLS2) should be considered critical. In this regard, two
return periods (i.e., 1- and 50-year) were examined to cover both ULS
and SLS. Table 6 shows the results for the calculation of the crest height
of the designed breakwater for the return periods of 1 and 50 years. It
should be noted here, that the surge value for different return periods in
this table has been determined based on extreme value analysis. As can
be seen in Table 6, due to the significant difference between the design
and service conditions, it was found that the overtopping of the design
waves determines the crest level. According to this, it can be predicted
that by determining the crest level based on the design waves, the re­
quirements of the service condition are also met. Therefore, the crest
level has been determined for both the conventional and joint design
approaches. The results, shown in Table 7, imply that the volume of the
armor layer is reduced by about 5%, and correspondingly, the volume of
the filter layer is also reduced by about 10%. These differences are
judged significant due to the high cost of the construction of rubble
mound breakwaters and outline the advantages of the joint design
approach.
A valuable conclusion from these results is the suggestion of values
for tidal levels to engineers, to be used in the conventional design
method. Using the new results, it is possible to make changes to the
existing design assumptions. It has been mentioned before that in this
approach, the storm surge corresponding to a certain return period (e.g.
1- or 50-year) plus an appropriately defined tidal level (here, MHWS3) is
considered as the design water level. As can be seen in the above results,
the water level in the conventional method is about 17% higher than the
respective estimate in the joint design method, suggesting to modify this
estimate in common engineering practice. In Fig. 21, the values of tidal
levels are compared with water levels of two return periods (1-year and
50-year). Supposing a maximum value for the storm surge, according to
this diagram, it is suggested that the amount of tidal level in the con­
ventional design methods for a 50-year return period be equal to (1.08-
1.18)*MHWN4 and accordingly, for a 1-year return period the value of
(1.11-1.23)*MLWN5 is recommended. In conclusion, it should be said
that in the design of breakwaters of the study area in the conventional
(or non-probabilistic) method, on average, the values of 1.17*MLWN
1
Ultimate Limit State
2
Serviceability Limit State
3
Mean high water springs
4
Mean high water neaps
5
Mean low water neaps
S. Radfar et al. Applied Ocean Research 112 (2021) 102711

Fig. 20. Design of a cross section based on: a) a conventional and b) a joint probability approach.

Table 6
Crest height calculation for 1-year and 50-year return periods.
ReturnPeriod Hs [m] Tp [s] Surge [m] MHWSa[m] DesignWater Level [m] CrestLevel [m] Freeboard [m]

1 year 2.23 11.67 0.21 2.47 2.68 8.05 5.37

50 years 5.03 13.60 0.57 3.04 11.55 8.51
a
Mean high water springs.

and 1.13*MHWN can be considered for the tidal levels in 1-year and 50-
Table 7
year conditions, respectively. This corrects the initial assumptions and
Design values for the conventional and joint design approaches.
ensures that the values of the common design method will be close to the
Parameter Conventional design approach Joint design approach values of the joint method and avoids over- or underestimation in the
Design Water Level [m] 3.04 2.59 design. This result is valuable in terms of implementation and perfor­
Crest Level [m] 11.55 10.9 mance, and this approach can also be considered in the design codes.
Freeboard [m] 8.51 8.31 Another point to consider is the effect of climate change (Galiatsatou
et al., 2018). It may have either positive effects (reduction of over­
topping discharge) or negative effects due to the fact that this phe­
nomenon may increase water level and wave height and hence, the

Fig. 21. Selecting an appropriate tidal level for use in the conventional design method of rubble mound breakwaters using the corresponding values of the joint
design approach, in the 1-yr and 50-yr R.P. cases (Unified Specifications for Surveying and Mapping – Volume 7, 2008).

14
S. Radfar et al.
amount of overtopping in the future (Sierra et al., 2016; Sierra, 2019).
This affects the design of coastal structures, and also the management of
coastal areas and ports (Lin-Ye et al., 2017). According to Goharnejad
et al. (Goharnejad et al., 2019), it is predicted that the increase in water
level by 2100 will be about 24 cm. Accordingly, the average annual
increase in water level will be 3 mm, and as a result, the relative free­
board height will be reduced annually by this amount. Although, it is
difficult to predict the wave height changes in the future and any pre­
diction is accompanied by uncertainties, previous research in this area
has shown that the wave height in the Chabahar region will not change
much until 2100 and will remain almost constant (Kamranzad, 2014).
The results in Fig. 22 show that the amount of overtopping discharge in
the conventional approach is about 15% higher than in the joint
approach and this value grows every year. Higher freeboard and lower
overtopping discharge in the new design approach, have a significant
positive effect on the vulnerability of the structure against climate
change effects in the future, limiting the amount of damage caused by
excessive overtopping within a more tolerable range.
5. Conclusions
In the present study, the design of a cross section of a conventional
rubble mound breakwater in the Makran Coasts on the southern coasts
of Iran has been performed using a commonly used and a joint proba­
bility approach and the results have been compared. For this purpose,
the joint analysis of two environmental variables, the significant wave
height and the water level was conducted using Copula functions. An
appropriate declustering scheme and the inter-event level criterion are
taken into account to select the i.i.d samples. The joint analysis was done
using 26 different copula families and the Roch-Alegre Copula function
was identified according to statistical metrics as the best joint function
for modeling the dependence between the significant wave height and
the water level. Then, the critical design point for the overtopping
failure mode was determined and was used for the calculation of the
breakwater’s crest level and freeboard height. The results imply that the
volume of the armor layer is reduced by about 5%, which is economi­
cally attractive for engineering projects. Correspondingly, the volume of
the filter layer is also reduced by about 10%. Also, suggestions were
made for the correct selection of 1- and 50- year tidal levels for the
conventional design method to be used in the design standards. Finally,
the effects of climate change were investigated noticing that the amount
of overtopping discharge in the conventional approach is about 15%
higher than that of the joint approach and this value increases every
year. Higher freeboard and lower overtopping discharge in the new
design approach, have significant positive effects on the vulnerability of
the structure against climate change effects in the future. This easy-to-
use methodology is also widely applicable to rubble-mound scour pro­
tections (Fazeres-Ferradosa et al., 2018; Fazeres-Ferradosa et al., 2019),
vertical breakwaters (Dong et al., 2016), fixed platform (Zhai et al.,
2017) and other similar marine structures. However, it is recommended
to also perform hydraulic model studies to estimate the size and weight
of breakwater armor units to inspect the consistency of the extracted
results and to bring comprehensive insights into the proposed method­
ological approach.
Author statements
The first author, S. Radfar, has carried out the analyses, processed the
results and prepared the draft of manuscript.
M. Shafieefar conceived of the presented idea, supervised the
research and findings.
H. Akbari and P. A. Galiatsatou contributed to the interpretation of
the results and provided critical feedback.
A. Rezaee Mazyak, provided the data and contributed to the data
analysis.
All authors discussed the results and contributed to the final
15
Applied Ocean Research 112 (2021) 102711
Fig. 22. The trend of changes in overtopping discharge (l/s/m) in the coming
years (2030–2100) for the two different design approaches; blue line is for the
conventional design method and the pink is for the joint design method. (For
interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is
referred to the web version of this article.)
manuscript.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
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