Insight | The future of maritime safety
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Any vessel at sea can be exposed to many dangers, from severe weather conditions to equipment failure, piracy, and unpredictable circumstances such as the recent Covid-19 pandemic and crew change crisis, resulting in exhausted crew members.
Our latest research showcases three years of Inmarsat Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) vessel distress call data, providing unique insights into some of today’s trends, highlighting the need for a strong collaborative industry approach and cultural change to focus minds on true areas for concern and develop a vision for shipping’s future.
With the commercial vessel fleet growing by 4.1 per cent in 2019, the report logs 834 distress calls made by Inmarsat GMDSS service users in 2020, compared to 761 in the previous year. In capturing the broadly stable relationship between ships in service and distress call numbers, the report nonetheless highlights specific areas for attention.
The report also establishes significant trends that merit close scrutiny by all stakeholders and offers a powerful example of the potential for analytics and new technology to provide the basis for a data-driven and more proactive safety to prevent serious accidents in the future.
“We believe that the creation of an online anonymised data lake of safety information will allow us to identify weak spots and solutions, allocate resources and measure progress towards enhanced safety,”
