Jens-Uwe Schröder-Hinrichs

Africa holds immense potential to address the global seafarer shortage, a pressing challenge that threatens the sustainability of maritime operations and the broader shipping industry. With over 60% of its population under the age of 25, the continent offers a youthful and largely untapped workforce. According to Lloyd’s Register Foundation’s Global Maritime Trends 2050, Africa is emerging as a key reservoir of future maritime talent. However, despite this demographic advantage, African seafarers currently make up about 4% of the global workforce, pointing to significant systemic gaps. The study employed a mixed-methods approach, integrating extensive literature review with empirical research from six selected countries across three African regions (Eastern, Southern and Western Africa) to assess the current state of Maritime Education and Training (MET) and employment trends. Findings point to strong interest in maritime education, with approximately 150 institutions and rising enrolment trends, alongside major challenges. These include limited access to quality training, outdated infrastructure, inconsistent data collection, weak industry linkages, gender disparities, and lack of diversity. Mapping MET institutions, examining enrolment and graduation patterns, and analysing employment pathways reveal both challenges and opportunities. The study underscores the urgent need for modernised training facilities, targeted investment, inclusive policies, and multi-stakeholder collaboration to transform Africa into a global seafaring hub. With strategic investment, policy support and global partnerships, African MET institutions can become engines of a skilled, resilient, and diverse maritime workforce. Africa is not merely a participant in the conversation on seafarer sustainability, it is a vital part of the solution.

The safety of navigation in approaches to harbours and along coasts has been a concern since the beginning of maritime trade approximately 2000 years ago. The ways and means for facilitating the safety and efficiency of maritime navigation have undergone a remarkable transformation from lighthouses, first established in 300–280 BC in Alexandria, Egypt, combined with the use of flag signals by ships to announce their arrival when approaching a harbour, through the use of radars for electronic monitoring combined with radio communications by ships, to the use of satellite-based automatic identification systems combined with automated digital information exchange between maritime autonomous surface ships and geographically distant shore control centres.This chapter examines vessel traffic management from an interwoven, regulatory, and technological perspective. It attempts to trace the evolution of international and European Union regulatory and organizational frameworks in response to the emerging needs of navigational safety and efficiency. In this context, essential technical jargon as key to an understanding of the topic of vessel traffic management is unpacked. Relevant work of the International Maritime Organization, International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities, European Commission, and European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) is discussed. The transformative role of the European Maritime Single Window environment stands out while traversing the contribution of technological advancements in the maritime domain leading to the development of vessel traffic management system architecture and capabilities. Digitalization and automation in maritime infrastructure are explored for their influence and significance of contribution to navigational safety. The ensuing discussion highlights the role of maritime single windows and the EMSA’s SafeSeaNet as key pillars for enhanced situational awareness in European waters together with the cutting-edge approach of sea traffic management. The chapter concludes with a fascinating outlook on the vessel traffic management system of the future in the emerging context of the fourth industrial revolution driven by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and maritime autonomous surface ships.

Movement of people is poised to be the next big thing in shipping. At the same time, almost 2,000 deaths are believed to occur annually as a result of passenger vessel accidents. A sample of 78 marine safety investigation reports for the period 2010-2021 drawn from the IMO’s marine casualty investigation database were found to have resulted in 319 fatalities and 19 injuries besides total loss of five vessels and material damage to 61 other vessels. Therefore, this study attempted to look into passenger ship accidents as a whole to identify commonalities and contributing factors that may not be immediately apparent when looking at accidents individually. A particular focus of the study was the human element. IMO Circular MSC-MEPC.3/Circ.4/Rev.1 formed the basis for the taxonomy applied in this study. The key findings of the study suggest the following: (a) not all human error belongs onboard given that the attribution of human erroneous actions in the analysed sample of passenger ship accidents was around 37% with the remainder attributed to the human element in organisational and management contributing factors, and external agencies; (b) safety off-duty matters equally given that as many as 20-45% of the errors in occupational accidents were linked to the onboard safety culture beyond the seafarers’ watch hours; (c) voyage planning needs preparing given that inadequate attention to safety management contributed nearly 30% in the occurrence pattern of groundings; (d) shore personnel attending to cargo operations and maintenance onboard need crew in attendance given that shore personnel would be unfamiliar with the ship and its work environment, and likely to suffer occupational accidents if left unattended during routine activities, or even during conduct of drills onboard; and (e) survival craft hook needs a relook given the continuing occupational accidents involving the inadvertent release of survival craft during recovery of craft from water.

Maritime autonomous surface ships (MASS) have received significant attention recently both by academia and industry to the point that the International Maritime Organization (IMO) started a regulatory scoping exercise. So far, most of the discussions have been solely focused on technical developments, thus overlooking the complex array of socio-economic and policy factors. This paper aims to fill this gap by comprehensively analyzing MASS development. We develop and apply a novel model of technology adoption (TechAdo) to holistically assess MASS as an innovation. By triangulating the data from elite interviews, with work at the IMO and a systematic literature search, we show that MASS is in development but still in its infancy. Our analyses show that factors in the enabling environment (social acceptance, regulation, and governance), along with human capital, are overlooked and need to be considered by research and policy.

The literature on maritime risk management is rich and the findings are pertinent to maritime authorities in the Baltic Sea region; however, little is known regarding how much of the available research is actually utilized. This paper aims to evaluate the uptake of maritime risk research by maritime authorities in the Baltic Sea region and to propose recommendations for its improvement. An existing model to evaluate research uptake was adopted. The factors that could improve research uptake were identified and built into a framework of research institutions’ push of research and its pull by the maritime authorities and industry. The level of research uptake and the utilization of push and pull factors were examined using an online survey questionnaire and in addition, policymakers and researchers were engaged in a workshop to identify the best practices and opportunities for research uptake in the Baltic Sea region. The results show that the overall research uptake level is reasonably good, although factors that increase research utilization are not wholly taken up. Policy recommendations are provided to improve research uptake and science communication. The emergent framework of improvement factors and best practices should serve as a guide to policymakers and researchers to optimize the uptake of research, regardless of discipline.

This guidebook is the first of a series of WMU Papers in Maritime and Ocean Affairs. It introduces the Human Error Identification technique TRACEr-Mar (Technique for the Retrospective and predictive Analysis of Cognitive Errors adapted to the Maritime Domain). Modern socio-technical systems had witnessed a complex co-evolution and interaction of both social and technical aspects in the day-to-day reality. However, when an accident occurs in such complex systems, accident causation models always have to simplify the reality and may therefore be limited for fully understanding all the aspects involved in the failing of the maritime socio-technical system involved in that accident. In order to carry out an accident investigation that covers the needs of a particular investigator, different tools exist. A systematic accident analysis requires a full methodological framework consisting of a model to support the focus of the investigation, a related data taxonomy, a methodology for the application of the taxonomy and an outline of the analysis of the findings. This guidebook provides the necessary information for such a framework, TRACEr-Mar, as adapted to the Maritime domain. This framework focusses on human machine interfaces and the related decision making during maritime operations. The guidebook is addressed to practitioners and researchers determined to apply the TRACEr-Mar technique to maritime accident investigations.