LR: Good data is a crucial foundation for improving safety

The core mission is to provide multiple sectors, including the maritime industry, with high-quality safety evidence, offering critical insights into what is needed to better protect people. To achieve this, the Centre is seeking to partner and collaborate with other evidence generators, including researchers, analysts, and funders, as well as intermediaries and end users, particularly safety practitioners in the maritime and other high-risk industries. By harnessing their knowledge, the Centre aims to help identify and address key gaps in safety evidence.

SAFETY4SEA: Could you tell us a bit about the Lloyd’s Register Foundation Global Safety Evidence Centre and the motivation behind its creation? What are its key focus areas within the maritime industry?

Nancy Hey: As sea as on land, evidence is critical to improving the safety of people and property; without it, we cannot fully understand the nature and scale of safety challenges faced by people around the world, nor what works to protect them from harm. However, our consultations with safety professionals and policymakers around the world and across industrial sectors have confirmed that many do not have access to sufficient high quality evidence; either because it does not yet exist, or because it has not been collated and communicated to them in an understandable and actionable form. That’s why we decided to establish the Lloyd’s Register Foundation Global Safety Evidence Centre, as a hub for anyone who needs to know ‘what works’ to make people safer. The Centre collates, creates and communicates the best available safety evidence from the Foundation, our partners and other sources on both the nature and scale of global safety challenges, and what works to address them. It works with partners to identify and fill gaps in the evidence, and to use the evidence for action. From our World Risk Poll, we already know that workplace harm is an underappreciated risk globally, which is why we have made it the focus of much of the Centre’s early work. And we know that maritime is one of most high-risk industries, with a quarter of ocean workers reporting experiencing harm at work in the past two years. Coupled with the Foundation’s wider strategic focus on safer maritime systems, this makes the sector an obvious priority for generating and disseminating high-quality evidence.

S4S: In your view, what are the most pressing safety challenges currently facing the maritime industry?

N.H.: Our recent World Risk Poll ‘Focus On’ report – ‘Risk perceptions and experiences of ocean workers’ – has made it clear that workers in the maritime sector are particularly exposed to increased safety risks as a result of climate change. Compared to the rest of the global workforce, they are not only more concerned about experiencing harm from climate change, but also face a heightened risk from severe weather events. These fears are rooted in lived experience, with many ocean workers having already suffered harm from extreme weather and dangerous working conditions at sea. This is why we have called for ocean workers to be recognised as a frontline group in the climate crisis with specific provisions made for their safety and wellbeing in national and international climate adaptation policies. Another key maritime safety challenge the Foundation is focused on is decarbonisation. The zero-carbon fuels to which the sector must transition all come with their own set of safety challenges, and so the Foundation is supporting vital work via the Lloyd’s Register Maritime Decarbonisation Hub to help the industry get ahead of the game on safe adoption by developing new human-centric safety standards, protocols, training frameworks and evidence-based risk management practices.

S4S: What are some of the most important findings the Centre has uncovered so far regarding safety in the maritime industry?

N.H.: If you don’t know when and where harm is occurring, it is hard to take effective action to prevent it. That is why it is important to acknowledge that the maritime sector currently has an under-reporting problem – according to the World Risk Poll, barely two in five ocean workers who have experienced harm at work reported the incident, compare to more than half of workers across other sectors. To address this, we are encouraging the maritime sector to expand access to confidential, independent reporting mechanisms like CHIRP, ensuring that all ocean workers can report safety concerns without fear of negative consequences.

S4S: What methodologies does the Centre use to collect and evaluate safety evidence in the maritime sector?

N.H.: To establish our baseline on rates of workplace harm in the sector, we have already conducted a bespoke reanalysis of data from maritime workers in our most recent World Risk Poll – collected anonymously by our partners Gallup in 142 countries in 2023. Going forwards, we will look to commission and partner on ambitious and innovative proposals that aim to establish ‘what works’ to reduce harm both in maritime and in other high-risk sectors. These will include a range of different research types – evidence reviews and synthesis; primary research, evaluations and trials; and data analysis. Whatever form the research takes, we will make sure it is in line with rigorous, best-practice methodological guides that we will share to ensure our evidence can be relied on to make decisions.

S4S: How do you deal with data scarcity or inconsistencies across different regions or shipping companies?

N.H.: Firstly, by going direct and asking workers in the sector about their experiences – that’s what the World Risk Poll is all about, and why the Foundation has invested in it. However, all data sources have their limitations, and understanding their methodology is important to knowing how they can be used – the World Risk Poll’s maritime sample size, for instance, limits how much can be done in terms of regional analysis. Finding ways to effectively generate and monitor incident data is therefore hugely important, and the Foundation continues to work with partners in the maritime sector to encourage and enable greater data sharing.

S4S: Has your evidence shown any significant impact of emerging technologies on maritime safety – either positively or negatively?

N.H.: The impact of emerging technology on safety at work is a subject the Centre is currently investigating, with a report due out in the summer. In the maritime sector, the Foundation continues to invest in projects that explore the application of technology, such a smart ports, and we will disseminate the learning from these projects across the industry. Lloyd’s Register has been working on maintaining maritime safety across technological transitions for a very long time – it’s something the sector knows how to do well.

S4S: Are you satisfied with progress made towards improving safety performance within the maritime industry? What would you like to see up to 2030?

N.H.: The World Risk Poll may look again at workplace harm rates disaggregated by industrial sector before 2030. Put simply, we must do everything we can to ensure the high rates of harm reported in the maritime sector have come down from our 2023 benchmark.

S4S: What gaps in safety knowledge or data have surprised you the most in your work with the maritime sector?

N.H.: Regular, high-quality, tailored occupational safety and health (OSH) training is a critical part of the equation when it comes to reducing workplace harm, equipping workers with the knowledge, expertise and attitudes needed to identify, report and mitigate risk – especially in high-hazard industries like maritime. In fact, the World Risk Poll found that those who have had recent training are more than three times more likely to report incidents when they occur. That’s why it’s alarming to discover that less than a third of ocean workers have received OSH training, compared to almost two in five in the wider economy. Only a quarter of ocean workers have had such training in the past two years. This represents a knowledge gap in the maritime workforce that urgently needs to be filled to help improve safety in the sector, with training viewed as a continuous process, not a one-off event.

S4S: How can maritime stakeholders, especially those in developing economies, collaborate with the Centre?

N.H.: The Centre is looking to partner and collaborate with other evidence creators – including researchers, analysts and funders – as well as intermediaries and end users, especially safety practitioners in maritime and other high-risk sectors, to harness their knowledge and help us identify and fill important safety evidence gaps. One way potential partners can get involved is by applying to the Centre’s first call for funding proposals, including projects which will help us understand the effectiveness of specific safety interventions in the maritime sector. The call is open for expressions of interest until 17 September 2025. Applications are particularly encouraged from countries hosting one of our new network of Ocean Centres – Brazil, Kenya, Ghana, Bangladesh, India, the Philippines and Indonesia.

S4S: What is your wish list for the industry and/or regulators and all parties involved for the shipping industry to enhance safety culture onboard?

N.H.: Priorities on our wish list to improve safety culture in the maritime industry include:

• Investing in evidence-based policy and practice through initiatives like the Global Safety Evidence Centre.
• Developing and enforcing stronger safety standards tailored to the unique challenges of working on or near the water, including protections against severe weather and isolation-related stress.
• Prioritising targeted OSH training for ocean workers.
• Expanding access to confidential, independent reporting mechanisms like CHIRP.

S4S: If you could change one thing to enhance safety performance in the industry, what would it be and why?

N.H.: Good data is an important prerequisite for improving safety; that is as true in the maritime sector as anywhere else. If the industry can put in place mechanisms to improve incident reporting, and work with us to share and learn from that data, it puts us on a much better footing to improve safety performance.

S4S: What message would you share with maritime leaders about enhancing safety at sea?

N.H.: To enhance safety at sea, we must be evidence-based in our decision-making, and we must in turn all contribute to the creation of that evidence by sharing our own learning across the sector. Equally, we must take a systems approach to maritime safety – breaking down barriers between different ocean sectors and stakeholders and sharing learnings in a way that avoids duplication and unintended consequences and considers all relevant perspectives on our safety challenges – especially those closest to them.

The views presented hereabove are only those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of SAFETY4SEA and are for information sharing and discussion purposes only.