Bridging Education and Future Work: Reframing Education and Competence Model for Remote Maritime Operations (REFRAME)

Fremveksten av fjernstyrte og autonome fartøy representerer en grunnleggende endring i sjøfartsoperasjoner, noe som nødvendiggjør en ny vurdering av menneskelige operatørers rolle og funksjon i denne nye konteksten. REFRAME-prosjektet forsøker å forklare endringene innenfor kunnskap, ferdigheter og kompetanse, samt forstå digitaliseringens og fjern-operasjonenes innvirkning på studenter, lærere og utdanningssystemer. Prosjektet gransker de fremvoksende tekniske og ikke-tekniske ferdighetene som er essensielle for skipsførere og fjernoperatører for å utmerke seg i denne nye æraen for sjøfart. Ved å trekke paralleller fra industrier som luftfart og akvakultur, som har tatt i bruk fjernoperasjoner, samler REFRAME innsikt om menneskelige faktorer og teknisk ekspertise relatert til landkontroll av autonome systemer. Dette initiativet understreker behovet for å oppdatere undervisningsmodeller og undervisningsstrategier for å møte industriens skiftende krav og effektivt forberede fremtidens arbeidsstyrke.

Professional education is essential for effective youth transition into the labour market and it is a key to a sustainable and inclusive society. Professional education provides individuals with skills and competence for employment in specific occupations. Among numerous professional fields, the maritime domain is vital to society and the economy through transporting more than 80% of the world trade and supporting around 31 million jobs for the global society (OECD, 2016; UNCTAD, 2022). The maritime industry is currently undergoing profound changes with increased automation and digitalisation under the 4th industrial revolution (DNV, 2018; Schwab, 2016). Technological development in remotely enabled autonomous maritime operations has progressed rapidly worldwide, and has been transformed from a vision to reality. However, with the new technology comes the need for operators to be trained for its use. Having the operators placed remotely will reduce ship sense, pose new attentional and cognitive demands for seafarers (Lützhöft & Dekker, 2002) and cause the current seamanship requirement, education and competence framework to no longer be fully applicable. The current international conventions and training requirements do not yet account for the needs of future ship operators involved in remote-control operations. Limited research to date has been undertaken on the skill shifts and reflect on how to effectively prepare the maritime workforce of the future. This research project aims to take a cross industrial sector and interdisciplinary approach to contribute to the education transition towards the remotely-controlled maritime future and produce research-based knowledge and policy recommendation that can contribute to societal resilience of educational challenges introduced by fast-paced digital transformation.