Water Level and Tsunami Design Criteria for LNG Marine Terminals in BC

The province of British Columbia (BC), situated on the Pacific coast of Canada, has considerable natural gas reserves and a variety of competitive advantages as a liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplier. This has led to significant investment by LNG proponents, to investigate the feasibility of marine terminals to provide process and export facilities. There are regulatory and technical challenges to be addressed to ensure appropriate design criteria are adopted for the new wave of planned LNG facilities. In this work, we investigate the implications of changing guidelines and standards on water level and tsunami design criteria for LNG terminals in BC. We present a framework to evaluate design water levels and tsunami hazard, considering: best practice, probabilistic methods, advances in scientific computing, technical challenges, and regional physical processes.