Finding safety in data: using maritime distress reports to protect mariners

From data overload to usable intelligence

Maritime Safety Information is transmitted through a tightly regulated framework, but Mr Dodd believes digital technology could make warnings more accessible.

Machine-readable, standardised messages could make it easier for systems to distinguish routine information from urgent warnings, while improved prioritisation could ensure critical alerts receive the attention they require.

There is also a human factor. Crews may interpret meteorological terminology differently depending on their training and experience.

“Technology is great, but technology isn’t everything,” Mr Dodd says.

Making rescue less chaotic

Inmarsat’s safety work also covers what happens after a distress call.

Its RescueNet service is provided free to rescue co-ordination centres and now connects with 72 centres globally. It was developed after Mr Dodd observed search-and-rescue operations in which several rescue centres, vessels and agencies were communicating through VHF, MF/HF, satellite communications, telephone and email simultaneously.

The result could be confusing and repetitive, particularly when language and accent differences were involved.

RescueNet’s distress chat provides a common text-based environment in which rescue centres and vessels can co-ordinate an operation. New participants can join while retaining the previous conversation, reducing the need to repeat critical information.

Mr Dodd says trials showed the difference clearly. An operation that had become “noisy and chaotic” across multiple communications channels became much calmer once participants moved to the distress chat.

It’s a finding and a simple fix that could have broad applicability in the maritime distress and response domain.

Understanding the unexpected, bringing in deeper expertise and expanding

Creating the Maritime Safety Hub produced another finding Mr Dodd describes as concerning or unforeseen: distress incidents involving vessels aged between one and five years have increased over the three-year dataset.

The numbers run counter to expectations that newer vessels, with modern technology and safety systems, would be less vulnerable.

“Why is there such a high number of calls involving these young vessels?” Mr Dodd asks. Included among the potential reasons are increasingly sophisticated technology being introduced faster than crews can be trained to use it. Another is that safety culture has not kept pace with technological change. But, as Mr Dodd points out, both are speculative, and only bringing in experts can start to piece together the puzzle presented by the data.

"We’ve got the raw data, and we want to drill down with industry experts and regulators to find out what’s happening with it," he says. 

Inmarsat plans to expand the work into navigational Maritime Safety Information, looking at hazards such as live-firing exercises, lighthouse outages and floating containers. Another emerging challenge in the maritime safety sphere is GNSS jamming and spoofing. Mr Dodd describes interference as a growing concern amid geopolitical tensions, with the technology evolving rapidly and making it harder for crews to know whether their navigation information can be trusted. Inmarsat is investigating ways to use its satellite and communications infrastructure to identify interference hotspots in real or near-real time. The eventual aim is to warn vessels when they are entering areas where GNSS disruption is known to be occurring.

The immediate aim is to establish whether particular warnings or hazards correlate with subsequent distress. The longer-term objective, according to Mr Dodd, is to trace the entire safety chain: what information was issued, whether it reached the vessel, how it was prioritised and understood, and what happened afterwards.

The goal is not simply to reduce the number of distress alerts, which has remained around 800 annually, but to reduce the casualties and loss of life that result from them.

“In an ideal world, I’d love to see what we’ve done so far have an impact so that the numbers are slightly lower again next year,” Mr Dodd says. “But I think you can be guaranteed it’s never enough. It’s a dream [to prevent all loss of life at sea], but if we can reduce it by one vessel, it’s progress.”

The 800 annual distress alerts are not simply points on a graph for Mr Dodd and his team. They represent people who may be frightened, injured or facing death.

If a vessel receives multiple warnings about severe weather and subsequently issues a distress alert, now the industry can examine the entire chain: what was sent, how it was prioritised, whether it was understood and whether anything could have been done differently.

The same approach can eventually be applied to navigation hazards, GNSS interference and other threats. In that sense, safety data becomes more than a historical record. It becomes a feedback loop for improving the system.

Mr Dodd is clear that Inmarsat cannot do that alone. Regulators, meteorological and hydrographic organisations, shipowners, operators, manufacturers and seafarers all have a role in interpreting the findings and deciding what should change.

His preferred outcome is measurable improvement.

“Now let’s get the industry working with us, so we can make affirmative change and save more lives,” he says.

The ambition is straightforward: fewer casualties, better rescue responses and, eventually, fewer distress calls.

And if the industry can prevent even one vessel from becoming another distress statistic, Mr Dodd believes the effort will have been worthwhile.