Two workshops in Training and Assessment was held in 2015. Both workshops had a focus to facilitate international and local visibility of the Department of Maritime Technology and Innovation and TARG. Additionally, it was designed to provide a shared platform between academia and industry to collaborate more efficiently to more efficient and safe maritime operations.

The workshops contributed to success in various project applications and initiated a collaboration in an ongoing PhD-application. The workshop also generated local media attention.

Maritime operations – which play a significant role in the Norwegian economy – involve complex challenges faced by the seafarers. The operations in maritime and offshore industries require training facilities aimed at delivering risk-free training environments as well as repeatable safe training scenarios. Simulator training, therefore, is becoming the main tool for training operators to deal with complex, error-prone and risk-filled scenarios. Thus ensuring safe and efficient maritime operations is one of the key points of the Norwegian government´s maritime strategy. To identify challenges faced by simulator training in the maritime domain is a challenge in itself. There is a need for cooperation and mutual understanding between the academia/researchers and practitioners. These workshops (entitled: Workshops on Training and Assessment) are aimed at resolving the foregoing challenge. The complex nature of maritime operations requires a cross-disciplinary approach for devising systematic performance assessment methodology. The evaluation of training effectiveness, in the light of performance assessment methodology, will be focused on one of the two planned workshops. It is expected that discussions on these topics, during the workshop, will lead to possible solutions to existing challenges and highlight recent challenges in relevant domains.

The expected outcomes are (but not limited to):

• Identification of challenges in Maritime Operations
• Cooperation between academia/researchers and practitioners/industries
• Lectures by leading experts in order to gain insight into current solutions
• Training methods
• Gap between current training practices and tasks handled by seafarers
• How to evaluate performance?
• Performance assessment methodology
• Performance improvement
• Development of new programs and projects aiming at safer/efficient marine operations
• Collaboration and cooperation among participants


The experts will be invited from prestigious institutions (Politecnico di Milano, Italy, and The Foundation for Scientific and Industrial Research, SINTEF, Norway, Kongsberg Maritime Simulation KM GCS). Representatives from Aalesund University College, Stord/Haugesund University College and other institutions, as well as from industries will enable a long-term collaboration on relevant topics. The theme of the workshops falls under the rubric of the MARKOM 2020.