Summary of this article:

Travel risk management based on ISO 31030 is part of your Duty of Care for your travelling colleagues.

Travel risks require countermeasures or risk treatments to reduce them. Examples of travel risks are car accidents, robberies, abductions, and checkpoints.

For these risks, it is necessary to enhance the traveller’s competence and skill level. At this enhanced level, the traveller can better manage these risks during travel.

Because of the psychomotor and emotion-based aspects of these competences and skills, they can only be taught through face-to-face travel security training, for example, Hostile Environment Awareness Training (HEAT).

What is ISO 31030?

ISO 31030 is a guideline for managing travel security risks. It is considered a reasonable and achievable standard for organisations with staff travelling to areas with security risks.

You can also use this norm to assess whether your travel risk management is on par.

The ISO norm covers many aspects of travel, from insurance and medical precautions to kidnapping and evacuation.

I would like to focus on the training aspect of the norm. Is in-person training necessary from an ISO 31030 perspective?

Let’s start from the beginning.

Travel risk management and competencies

Travel risk management is part of your duty of care. This means that you must take reasonable measures to protect your travelling colleague from foreseeable risks.

After you have assessed foreseeable risks, for example, robberies, you install countermeasures, which ISO calls “risk treatment,” to reduce them.

One of these measures is to enhance travellers’ competence and skills in dealing with risks while travelling.

This means that if robberies are a risk, a competence for the traveller is to stay calm under pressure and meet the demand (handing over their wallet) in a steady, controlled manner.
If a car accident is a risk, the competence is to deal with injuries like fractures, punctures, massive bleeding, etc.

This focus on competences makes sense because insurance, tracking and policies will not help a traveller in the moment of a dangerous situation. The situation has to be dealt with on the spot by the traveller, and only a competent traveller can do that.

Shared characteristics of the travel risks and competences

Travel risks and competences share two characteristics.

Most travel risks are physical, and you need physical movements to counter them. In jargon, psychomotor skills.

For example, in the case of bleeding, you need to physically apply a dressing or a tourniquet.

Another aspect they share is the affective (emotion-based and behavioural) component.

For example, during an abduction, you need to control your stress level and try to build rapport with your captors (at the appropriate time).

During HEAT training, for example, there is an emphasis on learning by doing under stress. Exercises and simulations with actors give travellers the chance to improve their affective and psychomotor competences.

As an illustration, your body has to repeatedly perform the movements required to apply a dressing to a bleeding wound. You must talk yourself through a checkpoint with a grumpy soldier and know how to behave in an area with leftover ammunition.

You need to not only understand what to do but also do it to truly experience it, enhance yourself, and repeat the process. This way, it will become ingrained, enabling you to apply it in real-life situations and increase your chances of returning home safely.

Epilogue

The most recent legal case concerning duty of care and ISO 31030 travel risk management centres on Mauchline v. CADUS e.V.

This case involves Australian aid worker Simon Mauchline, who was held and subjected to torture for 48 days by Syrian authorities in 2018 while working for the German NGO CADUS. The court case is scheduled for 18 September 2026.