Continuous training is considered nowadays as a key issue for the evolution of people being at professional and personal levels, enhancing productivity, employability, and social stability in a globally competitive world. Furthermore, the introduction of new technologies, the imposition of new regulations in the maritime industry and the growing challenges at port, shipping and logistics level increase the demand for new educational schemes. Concerning the market needs, TrainMoS II and On the MoSway Network (OTMW-N) European projects aimed for the development of student and professional's skills and laid the foundations for a cross-European maritime educational programme. TrainMoS II was the evolution of the TrainMoS project, improving the existing tools and covering a whole new range of technical and operational topics, including alternative fuels and technologies, logistics and safety issues such as damage control, evacuation and crisis management operations. TrainMoS II covered also the provision of blended vocational education to undergraduates and professionals who belong to different sectors in the multimodal transport chain. Both projects focused on the establishment of an educational framework facilitating the collaboration between industry and academia and used advanced ICT tools to match the maritime market needs with the training provision and to develop new and enriched content for the online platform with learning material and knowledge for both professionals and students. In the present study, the outcomes and experiences gathered from running the aforementioned projects are presented and discussed for their potential impact on the maritime industry.

The container sector has been growing fast since its dawn, and it has almost reached a climax in terms of handling mega containerships at existing ports. In that respect the offshore port system presented here can offer operational advantages. Furthermore, it can bring improvements to the utilisation of ultra large containerships and the enhanced energy efficiency they introduce. In this framework, this paper presents a cost analysis of the possible offshore port systems including their investment cost. This research is based on data from relevant projects and studies coupled with a number of assumptions to be presented. The results suggest that the offshore container port system can play a remarkable role to reduce energy consumption in the container shipping.

Autonomous shipping has been on the agenda of the shipping industry for the last decade, and is now closer to becoming a reality more than ever. Although it is technically possible to automate ships with the developments in autonomous technologies of recent years, the effective use of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) depends on meeting the specific operational needs of shipping. Furthermore, autonomous ships must provide significant economic, environmental, safety, and interoperability advantages for a transition to autonomy to be feasible. This study provides a detailed assessment of the operational improvements, possible impacts, and problems that may arise in the shipping industry with the advent of MASS. In addition to this, we assess the processes that would ensure the realization of autonomous ship-port interoperability. In this context, the study discusses the transition to MASS, taking a variety of factors into account, including the acceptability of MASS, benefits and economic impacts of the transition for the shipping industry, the adaptation of vessel types, MASS-port operational interactions (considering various aspects of port operations), and the role of port authorities. Data were collected using a detailed questionnaire distributed to relevant maritime industry stakeholders. The results of this study highlight the navigational issues facing port areas, and the challenges regarding MASS-port interactions during cargo operations. The findings of this research are expected to assist efforts of successfully implementing autonomous systems in the maritime transport chain.

In line with the monotonic growth trend of the container industry, container ships and ports have grown along with technical development. While this growth has increased economic sustainability by reducing costs, it had a significant impact on ports both operationally and infrastructural. In this context, the offshore port systems are expected to be an innovative port system that facilitates the effective use of mega container ships by offering significant operational and structural advantages. In this study, the investment costs of the offshore container port system (OCPS) and conventional port structures are compared. The purpose of this study is to serve as a guide for authorities on whether OCPS is worth investing in, in terms of investment costs as a result of processing data. This article highlights the financial feasibility of an offshore port, which is currently seen as a remote option, but has nonetheless environmental financial advantages for certain locations and can allow countries with difficult nautical access to mega vessels to enter the global trade network. The data to be used in this research were obtained from similar projects and studies with a series of industry assumptions. Overall, these results indicate that offshore container port systems promise to compete with conventional ports in terms of initial investment costs, operating costs, and return time of the investment. Thus, OCPS can help to achieve a more sustainable container transportation network, by combining operational and structural advantages with efficiency in terms of investment costs.

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