Reliability Confidence Intervals for Oil Spills in the Gulf of Mexico

Authors

William V. Harper, Otterbein UniversityFollow
Thomas R. James, Otterbein UniversityFollow
Ted G. Eschenbach, TGE Consulting

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

2009

Publication Title

Proceedings of the Congrès 2009 de la SSC

Publisher

Congrès de la SSC, Vancouver, British Columbia

Keywords

Offshore Oil Spills, Gulf of Mexico, Weibull Distribution, Maximum Likelihood

Abstract

An extensive study [Eschenbach and Harper (2006)] of offshore oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico with extensions to the northern seas of Alaska involved the estimation of the likelihood of oil spill volumes in the Gulf of Mexico for both pipeline and platform spills. This paper develops both maximum likelihood based reliability and percentile confidence intervals for the 3- parameter Weibull distribution. The statistical aspects are discussed along with applications of developed Excel VBA functions. The Excel routines are available free on the web at http://faculty.otterbein.edu/WHarper/. The functions are illustrated with Gulf of Mexico oil spill data.

Repository Citation

Harper, William V.; James, Thomas R.; and Eschenbach, Ted G., "Reliability Confidence Intervals for Oil Spills in the Gulf of Mexico" (2009). Mathematics Faculty Scholarship. 21.
https://digitalcommons.otterbein.edu/math_fac/21

Version

Post-Print

Peer Reviewed

1