Contributed by The Sustainable Shipping Initiative (MENA Oceans Network Member)
Shipping is entering a period of structural transition. Expectations are rising across climate performance, ocean impact, and the treatment of people. While environmental metrics are increasingly embedded in decision-making, people-related risk remains inconsistently measured and rarely integrated into commercial or operational choices.
This is not due to a lack of awareness. It is due to a lack of decision-ready signal.
Across the sector, data on welfare, wellbeing, and safety already exists. It is captured in inspection regimes, incident reporting, crew surveys, and insurance records. However, it is fragmented, inconsistently defined, and not structured for use in decision-making. As a result, people risk is not systematically priced, selected for, or managed.
In practice, this means decisions are being made with partial visibility.
A clear example is how fatigue and stress are recorded. These are often categorised as human error in incident reporting, obscuring root causes and weakening the link between working conditions and safety outcomes. At the same time, there is no common baseline of indicators that allows welfare performance to be compared across vessels or portfolios. Without comparability, there is no mechanism for consistent action.
The consequence is straightforward. Welfare is recognised, but it is not treated as material.
The SSI Human Risk and Resilience Platform
The Sustainable Shipping Initiative (SSI)’s Human Risk and Resilience platform is focused on closing this gap. The objective is to make people risk visible, comparable, and decision-relevant across the maritime value chain.
The starting point is data coherence. The industry does not need additional reporting burdens. It needs alignment on a core set of indicators that are simple, credible, and based on data that already exists. Mapping and prioritising welfare, wellbeing, and safety indicators creates a shared evidence base that can be applied across organisations and functions.
Visibility alone is insufficient; performance must also be actionable. To address this, the platform works with industry partners to develop vessel-level welfare signals. These are designed to be practical, verifiable, and usable in real decisions, including chartering, underwriting, and investment. When performance becomes visible and comparable, it can influence selection. This creates early incentives for improved onboard practices and begins to link welfare outcomes to commercial consequence.
A second priority is the integration of people risk into financial and insurance systems. Today, there is a disconnect between operational conditions and how risk is assessed commercially. Claims data, health records, and workforce indicators contain relevant insight, but they are not consistently integrated into underwriting or loss prevention frameworks.
Work with insurers, P&I clubs, and investors is focused on translating these inputs into decision frameworks that better reflect operational reality. The objective is not additional compliance, but improved risk accuracy. Where people risk is understood, it can be reflected in pricing, selection, and capital allocation.
This also addresses a structural feature of the maritime system. Incentives are distributed across multiple actors, and responsibility is often fragmented. Embedding people risk into commercial and financial decisions helps align these incentives around better outcomes.
There is a clear precedent for this approach. Climate alignment frameworks such as the Poseidon Principles demonstrate how standardised metrics, shared accountability, and transparent reporting can shift behaviour at scale. A comparable architecture can be applied to people risk as indicator alignment improves and data becomes decision-usable.
Next Steps
The next phase of work is focused on implementation. This includes establishing a core set of industry-aligned welfare indicators, piloting vessel-level recognition mechanisms, integrating people risk into insurance and finance pathways, and strengthening accountability across the asset lifecycle, including end-of-life practices.
This is practical work designed for application, with progress dependend on coordinated action across the value chain. Shipowners, charterers, ports, insurers, financiers, and regulators all influence how risk is understood and acted upon. No single actor can shift the system in isolation.
SSI welcomes collaboration with organisations willing to apply and refine these approaches in practice — please reach out at info@sustainableshipping.org for more information.
