Phase 3 · Incident Reporting
Voluntary incident reporting for a safer sector
Near-misses and close calls tell us more about sector safety than serious incidents do. This module captures what mandatory WorkSafe reporting cannot — the leading indicators that allow the sector to learn before something goes badly wrong.
Mandatory WorkSafe reporting
Deaths, notifiable injuries, and adventure-specific incidents (under Regulations 19A and 19B since April 2024) must be reported to WorkSafe directly and immediately.
Report to WorkSafeVoluntary sector reporting (this module)
Near-misses, minor incidents, equipment concerns, and below-threshold events submitted here are fully anonymised and used only for sector-level safety learning and aggregate reporting. No individual or organisation can be identified from the data.
The NZ sector data gap — officially documented
MBIE Targeted Review of Adventure Activities (2022)
"Data on serious harm other than fatalities in the sector is limited, so fatality data was adopted as the best available representation of serious harm."
NZ Mountain Safety Council National Incident Database
The NID collected voluntary incident reports from 2004 and published sector analyses from 2009 to 2012. It then went inactive. No equivalent database has replaced it.
MBIE 2021 Consultation: Adventure Activities — Keeping It Safe
Explicitly proposed "introducing an online log of notifiable events the adventure activities sector can access." This proposal has not been fully implemented as a sector-facing resource.
Why near-misses are the most valuable data
Heinrich's Triangle (a foundational safety model) estimates that for every serious injury there are approximately 29 minor injuries and 300 near-miss events. Near-misses are leading indicators — they reveal the conditions that produce harm before harm occurs.
Mandatory WorkSafe reporting captures the tip of this pyramid — fatalities and serious harm. The voluntary sector database captures everything below — the 99% of events that signal where the sector's risk profile is heading.
Privacy and legal framework
No safe harbour in NZ law
Unlike aviation (where the CAA has statutory protections for voluntary self-reporting), HSWA 2015 does not provide legal immunity for voluntary incident disclosure. This system is designed around full anonymisation to eliminate that risk entirely.
Zero identification in outputs
No operator name, individual name, specific location, or data combination that could identify an organisation or person appears in any published output. Minimum cell size suppression applies.
Not shared with WorkSafe
Data submitted to this voluntary database is not shared with WorkSafe, insurers, the Police, the Coroner, or any third party. The database is operated exclusively for sector safety learning and aggregate reporting.
Separation from mandatory reporting
This system is explicitly scoped to non-notifiable events. If an incident meets the WorkSafe notifiable threshold, the form directs you to WorkSafe's notification portal — we do not capture notifiable event details.
NZ Privacy Act 2020
All collection, storage, and use of data complies with the Privacy Act 2020 Information Privacy Principles. A Privacy Impact Assessment has been completed. Data is stored on NZ-based servers.
Sector benefit only
Reports are published as aggregate sector statistics — not organisation-level benchmarks. The data belongs to the sector, not to any commercial entity.
Sector safety dashboard
Sample data — for illustrationReports submitted
2024 season
Near-misses
The most valuable data
Near-misses per serious incident
Sector ratio
Activity disciplines represented
Incident severity distribution
% of total reports by severity level
Contributing factors
% of reports identifying each factor (multi-select)
Reports by activity
% of total reports
Seasonal pattern
% of annual reports by quarter
Contributing factors — a systems-thinking approach
Research (Goode et al., 2014; Wilderness and Environmental Medicine) found that "people, equipment, environment" categories are insufficient — causal factors occur at every level of the system. This module uses a six-level taxonomy based on the UPLOADS (Outdoor Council of Australia) model.
Person
Participant skill level, behaviour, fitness, experience, judgement
Equipment
Condition, suitability, maintenance, correct use, inspection
Environment
Weather, terrain, natural hazards, water conditions, visibility
Task / activity design
Programme design, risk assessment quality, group/environment match
Supervision / leadership
Guide or instructor decisions, group management, communication
Organisation / system
Policies, procedures, staffing levels, training, culture, oversight
Submit an incident report
Fully anonymous. No organisation or individual can be identified. Takes approximately 5 minutes.