Learning from crisis

“Lloyd’s Register Foundation’s mission as a global charity is to identify global safety challenges, seek out willing collaborators who share our strong social purpose and then build coalitions that deliver long term impact for people and property across the planet.

‘Learning from Crisis: Engineering a Safer Future’ is a series that embodies this charitable purpose – collaborating with one of our long-standing partners, The Resilience Shift, to bring together thought leaders and experts from our grants community and beyond to openly reflect on the lessons learnt from the disruption of COVID-19.

I’d like to extend my thanks to all the contributors. We hope that the insights from the roundtable sessions can strengthen our understanding of how we can build resilience and preparedness to global safety challenges.”

The Safety at Work roundtable was a moderated conversation around safety challenges in a post-covid world, from small-scale practical issues to long-term consequences to our institutions and systems.

The session reflected on how Covid-19 has disrupted existing practice around safety at work, how the sector has adapted, and what lessons the current disruption holds for our shared future.

In this session participants were asked to examine how their work life changed between January and September 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic; how they have managed to stay resilient – both personally and professionally – and prepare for a ‘new normal’ future.

There won't be a person entering the workforce for 10 years who doesn't have COVID as a reference for the disruption that can happen. We need to leverage that awareness.

 

Download the Safety at work report here.

Covid-19 has given everyone on the planet the same frame of reference. We have seen the emergence of a truly impressive spirit of common purpose, but we have much to learn the lessons of this crisis. We are coming to terms with how varying local standards can exacerbate global issues.

The pandemic has also demonstrated that when reacting to disruption, momentum is important; countries that instituted lockdown only after waiting to see conclusive data on their likely effects seem to have generally experienced greater economic disruption than those who that implemented response measures ahead of conclusive data. This has a bearing on our global responses to future disruption.

Models can’t tell us everything about the complex systems that we are trying to understand.

 

Download the Data report here.

The Education roundtable reflected on celebrating the innovation and adaptability demonstrated by teachers and educational institutions worldwide in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, while recognising the increasing sector wide realisation that the current model for education is broken.

The Covid-19 pandemic has provided an inflection moment to consider ways forward that address increasing global digital inequality, lack of standardisation, and how to restore critical social and human components to distanced digital learning.

Personal relationships are the heart of transferring knowledge. It’s not about what we teach, but what we learn together.

 

Download the Education report here.

In the Public Understanding of Risk session, held on 24 September 2020, participants were asked to examine how their work life has changed between January and September 2020 due to the Covid-19 Pandemic; how they have managed to stay resilient – both personally and professionally - and prepare for a ‘new normal’ future.

The session was a lightly guided discussion of how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected public understanding of risk, with thematic emphasis on the areas of leadership and decision making, disaster risk governance, risk communications, and the relationship between the pandemic and the climate crisis as concerns the above issues. The conversation drew on emerging findings from the Foundation’s research as well as input from grant holders and experts around global perceptions on risk and how these might be affected by the Covid-19 crisis. The session reflected on how Covid-19 has disrupted existing practice around risk governance and communications, how the sector has adapted, and what lessons the current disruption holds for our shared future.

COVID is a learning moment for how we work without thorough evidence. If we wait to see the evidence for what climate change is going to do with our planet, we’ll be too late.

 

Download the Public Understanding of Risk report here.