Risk Analysis of Marine Environmental Elements Based on Kendall Return Period

Against the background of global warming and rising sea levels, the threat of typhoon disasters to marine engineering structures has become increasingly serious. Therefore, the research on the design standards of marine environmental elements has become an important topic. In this study, two-dimensional joint distributions of wave height and surge height, surge height and wind speed, and wave height and wind speed were constructed based on the Gumbel–Hougaard (G-H) Copula function according to the data of marine environmental elements under extreme sea conditions from Naozhou observation station in the sea waters of western Guangdong, and the Kendall return period is introduced. The joint return periods, co-occurrence return periods, and Kendall return periods of joint distributions were calculated, along with the latter’s corresponding design values of environmental elements. The results showed that the Kendall return periods and the corresponding design values are between two kinds of traditional return periods. After analysis, the conclusion is that the Kendall return period can reflect the occurrence regularity of marine hydrological events more accurately, and the design values of marine environmental elements calculated under this standard can reasonably lower the investment under the premise of ensuring structural safety. Therefore, the Kendall return period can serve as the new selection for marine engineering design and risk management.