Op-Ed: Open reporting is a maritime safety must

The shipping industry’s struggles to overcome its most persistent safety challenges highlights the need for open reporting based on cultural change and modern technology, says Peter Broadhurst, senior vice president of Inmarsat Maritime’s Safety and Regulatory department.

Data from The Future of Maritime Safety Report 2024 reveals that Inmarsat Maritime, a Viasat business, received 788 Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) distress calls through its RescueNET and SafetyNET services in 2023. This was down 7.6% from 853 in 2022, although the number remains consistent with the average 799 calls registered per year through  2018–2023.

Allianz Commercial’s Safety and Shipping Review 2024 tells a similar story, with the number of reported shipping casualties or incidents remaining high in 2023 despite a slight decrease (3%) compared to 2022. Of the 2,951 incidents reported in 2023, more than half (1,587) were caused by machinery damage or failure—the cause of most incidents over the past decade.

Although total vessel losses in 2023 (26) were down by over a third from 2022 (41), their causes were familiar, with the leading culprits—sinking, grounding, and fire/explosion—consistent with the average top three since 2014.

Together, these statistics demonstrate that, while the industry is gradually improving its safety record, more needs to be done to overcome its most persistent safety challenges. According to Broadhurst, the solution lies in open reporting enabled by cultural change and modern technology.

“Non-reporting, under-reporting, and delayed reporting of maritime safety incidents are endemic across many parts of the shipping industry,” he says. “Despite IMO member states being required to populate the Global Integrated Shipping Information System, we know that many are not consistently doing so, often due to concerns about damaging the reputation of their flags.

“We need to flip the narrative. Ship casualty and near-miss data can provide the basis for change. By understanding the root causes and frequency of incidents, shipping can develop specific mitigation measures. With modern technology at our fingertips, we can and must do more.”

Broadhurst adds that, while “data is not a panacea”, it can support decision-making under the right circumstances. “By working together and sharing anonymized data, industry regulators, shipowners and operators, insurers, seafarer unions, and others can benchmark performance and take proactive steps to improve safety,” he says.

In the search and rescue (SAR) segment, work is already under way to promote a more proactive safety approach based on collaboration and technology.

In September 2023, the International Maritime Rescue Federation (IMRF) launched the #SaferSAR initiative to improve safety at sea and foster collaboration and knowledge sharing among SAR professionals worldwide. As part of the initiative, the IMRF is conducting a feasibility study on the development of a platform for sharing lessons learned and best practices identified in SAR response, incidents, accidents, and exercises.

“The IMRF and the wider SAR community are dedicated to playing their part in raising awareness and safety at sea, and collaboration is central to our organisational functions,” commented Caroline Jupe, Chief Executive Officer, IMRF. “Our goal is to determine the sharing culture within the SAR community, identify key barriers and potential value of sharing information, and explore potential design options for a global information-sharing system.”

Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) on port state control (PSC) are also embracing a culture of collaboration driven by technology.

In May 2023, the Med MoU accepted a proposal from the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) to develop a new information system, THETIS-Med, to support PSC inspections. Derived from THETIS, which is used by members of the Paris MoU, THETIS-Med will support vessel targeting for PSC purposes, provide inspection statistics, and offer a direct link to RuleCheck – an EMSA repository of maritime legislation.

By facilitating information sharing and simplifying the reporting process, the initiative will enhance transparency and situational awareness. More broadly, the agreement demonstrates what can be achieved when interests align—and potentially offers a blueprint for increased collaboration between PSC MoU.

For its part, Inmarsat launched the SEA-CARE Working Group on 25 April 2024, bringing together senior representatives from various stakeholder groups to discuss maritime safety in the context of distress, ship-casualty, and incident data.

Launch event attendees stressed the need for a proactive rather than reactive approach to safety based on the sharing of quality data. This, they said, is currently hindered by the delayed or under-reporting of ship casualties, incidents, and near misses—often due to a fear of reputational damage or constraints over data ownership – as well as by companies holding their data in silos.

Crucially, stakeholders have agreed to explore how their own organizations’ safety-related data could be shared to paint a more holistic picture of maritime safety from which the whole industry could benefit. They have proposed the following potential solutions for proactively improving safety in shipping:

• Enhancing data integration to provide a more detailed and insightful safety picture
• Encouraging the submission of safety data to the IMO by increasing engagement with member states
• Supplying more complete data to facilitate trend analysis, inform the development of measures, and help prioritize capacity-building programs to aid implementation and enforcement
• Promoting—not punishing—transparency in incident reporting to nurture a culture of safety within companies and throughout the industry

The SEA-CARE Working Group will continue to convene annually to review Inmarsat GMDSS data and seek proactive ways to improve shipping-wide safety standards. The aim, Broadhurst explains, is to change the industry’s mindset.

“Early notification and transparency should be encouraged. We must embrace and embed an open safety culture, starting with access to safety data. We live in an increasingly digital world and have unparalleled access to data and sophisticated tools and models to analyse it, but we must develop the mechanisms to seamlessly share it with peers.”

Doing so, he says, will create a knowledge baseline and enable shipping to identify trends, prioritise risk treatments, and track progress over time. “Ultimately, we should be aiming to design a more proactive regulatory process,” he concludes.