TEAM TRAINING IN SAFETY AND SECURITY VIA SIMULATION: A PRACTICAL DIMENSION OF MARITIME EDUCATION AND TRAINING

In the rather extended maritime domain, a term that should be the epicenter of any successful career-building path is tailor-made training via cutting-edge simulators. To cut a long story short, the breadth of operations on the various types of ships has expanded to such a large extent that extensive practical training drills are becoming a compelling need to contribute to competent seafarers. This type of training can guarantee the positive outcome in their decision-making process and help the seafarers often being under continuous pressure, to suitably respond to the various safety and security threats on-board a vessel. The several conventions and codes introduced by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) –including MARPOL (International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships), SOLAS (International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea), but moreover ISPS Code (International Ship and Port Facility Security Code) and STCW (Standards of Training Certification and Watch-keeping) being probably the most well-known examples both within and outside the maritime community– posing and requesting significant performance demands on crews. Sophisticated simulation series that promote teamwork and cooperation are the tools urgently needed to maximize training efficacy.

Handling safety situations under stress (emergency response), crisis management and reactions towards a security incident are important aspects of Maritime Education and Training (MET). The authors approach to address those aspects utilizes enhanced simulation based team training. They argue that an effective way to gain experience and achieve corresponding skills, are practice runs on specially designed simulators that realistically represent complex conditions on-board vessels, following the respective prompts though realistic scenarios. The concept of a safety & security training simulator is introduced; the research work related to the implementation of a learning objective oriented development of simulation training scenarios and the pedagogic value added by simulation to MET are also discussed. A very important recommendation is that maritime training needs should not be regarded simply as a means to achieve regulatory compliance. The value imparted by simulation as a pedagogic tool to the maritime teaching and learning process is trementous; adopting the learning objective oriented development of simulation training scenarios in order to effectively address pre-identified learning outcomes is the right methodology to nurture competent seafarers.