Tropical Cyclone Wind Characteristics for the Bangladesh Coast Using Monte Carlo Simulation

Abstract

Introduction The Sites The sites chosen for the simulations are: Khulna, Barisal, Noakhali, Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar. (Figure-1) Wind and storm surge are crucial factors in the determination of how much damage occurs in the coastal regions in association with any particular hurricane or tropical cyclone. Since very few tropical storms actually strike at a particular site and historical records only exist for the past hundred years or so, there exist a limited number of observations at each site. This is a major problem when considering cyclone wind statistics for research. Batts et al. (1980) determined that it is not possible to use statistical analysis of the highest annual wind speeds at a particular site in order to determine the extreme wind speeds in hurricaneprone regions. Monte Carlo simulation is, therefore, used in this study as an indirect method to obtain the cyclone wind statistics for the Bangladesh coast.