This part of ISO 19901 gives general requirements for the determination and use of meteorological and
oceanographic (metocean) conditions for the design, construction and operation of offshore structures of all
types used in the petroleum and natural gas industries.
The requirements are divided into two broad types:
a) those that relate to the determination of environmental conditions in general, together with the metocean
parameters that are required to adequately describe them;
b) those that relate to the characterization and use of metocean parameters for the design, the construction
activities or the operation of offshore structures.
The environmental conditions and metocean parameters discussed comprise
extreme and abnormal values of metocean parameters that recur with given return periods that are
considerably longer than the design service life of the structure,
long-term distributions of metocean parameters, in the form of cumulative, conditional, marginal or joint
statistics of metocean parameters, and
normal environmental conditions that are expected to occur frequently during the design service life of the
structure.
Metocean parameters are applicable to
the determination of actions and action effects for the design of new structures,
the determination of actions and action effects for the assessment of existing structures,
the site-specific assessment of mobile offshore units,
the determination of limiting environmental conditions, weather windows, actions and action effects for
pre-service and post-service situations (i.e. fabrication, transportation and installation or decommissioning
and removal of a structure), and
the operation of the platform, where appropriate.
NOTE Specific metocean requirements for tension leg platforms are to be contained in ISO 19904-2[1], for sitespecific
assessment of jack-ups in ISO 19905-1[2], for arctic structures in ISO 19906[3] and for topsides structures in
ISO 19901-3[4].