Welcome to the latest edition of the excellent IUMI Eye publication.

In February, IUMI kicked off its 2021 meeting programme with our traditional Winter meeting. This forum brings together sessions involving the IUMI Secretariat, the Executive Committee and the Technical and Forum Chairpersons and Secretaries. Of course, in one sense the meeting was not conventional at all, because all our discussions were necessarily held ‘online’.

Nevertheless, we completed one of the most pivotal tasks of this event, namely to select a common theme for our main conference in September. Our common theme changes each year. It provides a banner and acts a rallying point for the conference. Our workshops in September will have topics that embrace the common theme and feed off it. 

This year’s common theme will be:

“Pathways to a sustainable, resilient and innovative future.”

The theme has several elements to consider.

Quite obviously, the pandemic is the dominant issue and has been for over a year. By the time we get to our annual conference, we will know whether COVID-19 is largely behind us or whether we are still being confronted by lots of challenges. September will also be the first moment where we shall be able to measure how much COVID-19 impacted our industry’s premium base in 2020. Yet the common theme is not intended simply to facilitate a sequence of presentations on the pandemic (although this will clearly be an important feature of our conference).

The title also draws attention to the growing importance of environmental issues and sustainability. And it will encourage us to continue our journey of exploration about digital innovations in our sector. We will also be able to reflect on how resilient we have been as a sector in dealing with the operational and servicing challenges. And the title is deliberately optimistic and forward looking too.

So all in all, I think we have devised a vibrant and energetic banner for our conference in the Autumn.

In the meantime, let me return to this issue of IUMI Eye. In here, you will find the usual mixture of insightful technical articles. As ever, the contents are a showcase of the collective work of the IUMI community. We feature Policy Forum topics such as cyber, low sulphur fuel and Brexit. We take another look at containership safety, but this time with a particular drilldown into the recent loss of containers overboard in several recent incidents. There are also articles looking at innovations such as remote casualty surveys and offshore wind technology.

As ever, we are especially indebted to the technical insights provided by our IPPs (in this edition, Battermann & Tillery, Concirrus, HFW, Insurwave, LOC and Survey Association have all contributed with interesting and insightful articles) and our Affiliates (in this issue, ALSUM reports on the logistical issues associated with the distribution of Covid vaccines in South America).

Enjoy the magazine. Stay safe and well.