Sea-Care to combine Inmarsat GMDSS, seafarer data to enhance marine safety

Members of the Sea-Care working group agreed to share datasets and information, including data from the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) and from crew welfare surveys, to gain a more complete picture of safety at sea.

This working group is led by industry body Maritime London and Viasat subsidiary Inmarsat Maritime.

At its latest meeting in London, UK in February 2025, the group agreed specific datasets would complement Inmarsat’s GMDSS data to pinpoint the root causes of maritime casualties.

Seafarer surveys and incident reports can enrich findings drawn from Inmarsat’s GMDSS alert data to determine the underlying safety deficiencies behind the consistently high distress call figures. This information will be used to develop a more holistic understanding of maritime safety, members of Sea-Care agreed.

“If we look at safety data as a pyramid, what we report on at the top is the number of distress calls, but when we come down the pyramid, we get to the root causes of those top-level issues,” said Sea-Care co-chair and Inmarsat Maritime vice president of safety and regulations, Peter Broadhurst.

“Using other datasets to derive a more complete picture of what is behind the problems at the top could be key to effecting real change and reducing the frequency of serious incidents at sea.”