The Sustainable Shipping Initiative (SSI), with funding from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation, has unveiled a pioneering, industry-wide data map that provides the first integrated view of crew welfare, wellbeing, and safety data across the global shipping sector. This standalone resource serves as a vital reference for stakeholders including owners, operators, insurers, charterers, financiers, and seafarer organisations, aiming to deepen understanding and drive action on the human elements of maritime risk.

The comprehensive mapping exercise has brought to light a significant challenge: while data on crew welfare exists, its application is often fragmented, siloed, and inconsistent. The report highlights that despite well-established legal definitions of welfare and safety, these are not being applied uniformly across the industry. Crucially, there are no shared industry-wide indicators against which progress can be effectively assessed, nor a transparent way to account for good welfare practices. Information sharing, vital for sector-wide improvement, remains inconsistent.

Ellie Besley-Gould, CEO of the Sustainable Shipping Initiative, commented on the findings: “The information we need to manage human risk well exists, but it is fragmented, inconsistent and rarely connected to the decisions that matter.”

The SSI report identifies five critical evidence gaps that impede effective seafarer welfare and decision-making:

  • Fatigue Misrepresentation: Fatigue is routinely miscoded as human error in incident reports, systematically underrepresenting the actual drivers of losses. This leads to risk being priced on incomplete information, or not priced at all.
  • Lack of KPI Baseline: The absence of a common KPI baseline, due to misaligned definitions and indicators across organisations, means welfare performance cannot be compared or benchmarked at a portfolio level.
  • Weak Early-Warning Systems: Current reactive tools often miss leading indicators, despite the raw data needed to build robust early-warning capability already existing across various systems, including claims, inspections, and crew surveys.
  • Absence of Transparent Welfare Accounting: There is no industry-wide mechanism for transparently accounting for the presence of good welfare practice, resulting in disconnected data.
  • Limited Good Practice Sharing: The integration of people-risk signals into operational and chartering decisions is currently limited to a small number of insurers, P&I clubs, owners, managers, and charterers. Without broader information-sharing, the benefits of good practice remain confined to early movers.

These identified gaps have direct and tangible consequences on everyday commercial decisions. Exposure manifests in elevated incident rates, increased claims, off-hire time, and operational disruption. It contributes to crew instability that erodes performance and fosters poor onboard conditions leading to disputes, Port State Control detentions, and significant reputational damage. Financially, these issues translate into reduced cashflow, higher earnings volatility, increased default and restructuring risk, asset impairment, and heightened counterparty risk.

The findings are the result of a thorough audit of existing welfare, wellbeing, and safety data and research. This was complemented by extensive input from a diverse range of industry stakeholders, including contributions from owners, operators, insurers, charterers, finance, legal, recruitment agencies, NGOs, and seafarers. The outcomes underwent rigorous peer-review by industry participants prior to publication.

Menand Karsan, general manager, marine at Rio Tinto, underscored the report’s significance: “Improving safety and crew welfare starts with a clear, shared understanding of the data the industry can rely on. This mapping represents a meaningful step towards greater transparency, consistency, and alignment, helping support more informed dialogue, better decision-making, and targeted action.”

#MaritimeIndustry #CrewWelfare #SeafarerSafety #ShippingData #SSIReport #LloydsRegisterFoundation #RiskManagement #SupplyChain #HumanElement #MaritimeInnovation