Atlantic Maritime Ecosystem Network

ended

The Project seeks to strengthen the cooperation between maritime business and academia, designing and implementing a Northwest European Atlantic Maritime Network made up by training centres and industry, meeting the needs of the port maritime market and maritime curricula, whilst enhancing the visibility and opportunities of blue economy and therefore, attractiveness of blue careers. Through the consortium, actors from blue economy sectors and related value chains (maritime transport, shipbuilding and ship repair, shipping, blue biotechnology, fisheries and aquaculture) will join their effort to offer to students and employee pertinent skills needed to adapt their knowledge and take part to blue economy development. To achieve this objective, an executive committee will be defined to support the trans-regional network of maritime-port industries and educational centres that will constitute the European Atlantic Maritime Network, offering an overview of current maritime education and employment demands in the maritime-port sector of the Atlantic sea basin. This Network will be consolidated in a Maritime Knowledge Centre on which to build long-term structured collaboration between industry, education and public authorities. The network will be made up by training centres (university and vocational training centres) and business of three main maritime sectors: shipbuilding, seaport logistics and fishing and is conceived to become the supporting framework to share human capital, best practices and tools in the Atlantic maritime environment, driving new collaborative training actions to integrate strengths and innovative proposals of each region. To coordinate actions among members of the network, a specialised unit with key stakeholder representatives of the target sectors from countries of the Atlantic European frontage will be created, developing the functions of an operational unit of the network. The technical unit will integrate the information on education and employment demands in key maritime-port sector for the Blue Economy growth of the region (sea-port logistics, shipbuilding and fisheries and associated emerging sectors, blue biotechnology, renewable energies and coastal and environmental protection) to identify the skills, competences and capabilities that companies demand and contrast these gaps with the current offer of training programs and to design and implement new skill-oriented training courses whenever needed. The main physical tool to support the network will be an online platform. To support this exchange among EU parties and promote collaborative actions among business and academia, the platform will be associated with a GIS tool that will allow to visually identify the main entities related to maritime training and associated companies, as well as the relationships established by them, an e-learning environment, and a programme of knowledge and professionals exchange to promote the development of trans-regional training courses. This will allow the educational centres, in both Vocational Education Training and university institutions, to offer in the short term specialized courses, and in the long term, update the curricula to the demands of economic sectors. In parallel, an innovative training programme aimed at blue market entrepreneurship, integrating ecosystem skills involving innovation centres, social enterprises and investors will be launched. This program is designed to boost the entrepreneurial potential of young graduates in the Atlantic basin around sea port markets, by strengthening new blue business ideas, promoting profiles with high adaptability and enhancing skills both at the social and technical domains. Through these major objectives fundamental challenges/transformations related to the industrial revolution applied to the maritime port sector and the emerging challenges of environmental changes on a global scale that are affecting the development of the market competitiveness of t