The analysis of design wind speed estimates specified in the National Building Code of Canada.

The design wind pressures specified in the 2005 National Building Code of Canada (NBCC) have been derived from the Gumbel distribution fitted to annual maximum wind speed data collected up to early 1990s. The statistical estimates of the annual maxima method are affected by a relatively large sampling variability, since the method considers a fairly small subset of available wind speed records. Advanced statistical methods have emerged in recent years with the purpose of reducing both sampling and model uncertainties associated with extreme quantile estimates. The two most notable methods are the peaks-over-threshold (POT) and annually r largest order statistics (r-LOS), which extend the data set by including additional maxima observed in wind speed time series. The objective of the paper is to explore the use of advanced extreme value theory for updating the design wind speed estimates specified in the Canadian building design code. The paper re-examines the NBCC method for design wind speed estimation and presents the analysis of the latest Canadian wind speed data by POT, r-LOS, and annual maxima methods. The paper concludes that r-LOS method is an effective alternative for the estimation of extreme design wind speed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]