Developing Incident and Near Miss Reporting in the Maritime Industry–A Case Study on the Baltic Sea

The underlying presumption in safety management theories is that learning lessons from incidents and near misses improves safety performance. The mandatory International Safety Management Code requires shipping companies to establish a reporting system in order to promote continuous learning in safety management. However, many studies around the world show that incidents and near misses are reported poorly in the shipping industry. In this paper, we study both internal maritime incident and near miss reporting systems in shipping companies and national reporting systems in Sweden and Finland (Insjö, ForeSea). The aim is to analyze reporting systems in order to find best practices for near miss reporting and to improve utilization of reporting in shipping.