International Journal

on Marine Navigation

and Safety of Sea Transportation

Volume 1

Number1

March 2007

113

Securitas Mare – Crowd and Crisis

Management

C. Bergquist

Kalmar Maritime Academy, Sweden

ABSTRACT: Shipping is by nature a genuinely international activity, with strict requirements for harmonized

and equal training, regardless of where it is conducted. IMO’s model courses aims to give guidance in this

respect. However, each signatory party to STCW-95 is free to set its own standards for the training. Around

the world this has led to the unfortunate situation where there is not only variation in form, but also in content

of the actual training that is being performed.

The project Securitas Mare or “Safe Seas” was promoted through the EU’s Leonardo da Vinci program to

address one aspect of this particular problem and aimed to create a common European standard for Crowd and

Crisis Management training. The project had 15 partners, amongst them 10 MET institutions and the course

concept thus created has today been accepted as an alternative standard in 6 of the participating countries.

Presently a continuation has been started, in October 2006, to continue to spread the projects result through a

so called Transfer of innovation-project.

This presentation deals with the aims and results of the course and the project, describes the 15 project

partners, the excellent results achieved as well as the projects future aims for specialized training also for

shore side staff and other categories of seagoing personnel not covered by today’s requirements.

1 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

In the aftermath of the Estonia disaster, IMO decided

that it was time to introduce a new type of training to

the shipping community, namely the CROWD and

CRISIS MANAGEMENT training. Over the years

there has been a lot of talk about the human factor

and how important it is to understand the same and

take it into account when analyzing accidents and

incidents of various natures, but little has been done

to actually include training of the elements of the

human factor within the curriculums of the

academies. It is true of course that some steps has

been taken to overcome these shortcomings, through

the creation of BRM-courses, MRM -courses and

similar, and at some academies also enlarge the

courses covering leadership, teamwork and

management.

However, this new type of training requirement

did, for the fist time, request a change of focus from

training of technical issues towards understanding of

human behaviors and human reactions, with a

particular focus on behavior and reactions under

stress and in critical situations. One of the main

challenges for the industry and the traditional MET

system (Maritime Education and Training) was to

create courses meeting these requirements, with not

much of competence available within the traditional

academies, and not much of experience in creating

these types of courses.

With a long tradition of extensive traffic with ro-

ro passenger ferries between the two countries,

Sweden and Finland decided that it now was time to

grasp this new opportunity and for the first time try

to create a common curriculum for the new course,

which was named CCM or Crowd and Crisis

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Management. A project group was set up including

maritime academies in both countries as well as both

shipping administrations, an external expert on crisis

behaviour and reactions and finally a couple of

passenger vessel operators, representing both

countries formed a reference group.

The course curriculum thus created has not only

been used for courses in both countries ,but has also

led to an exchange of students and lectures between

the academies involved At a later stage, other

academies also in Denmark, Norway and Estonia

was invited to take part in the exchange and to

arrange courses based on the same curriculum. This

later cooperation was done within a Nordic Network

project called “TRYGGT HAV“ which is swedish

for SAFE SEAS.

2 IDENTIFIED PROBLEM ARES –

IMPORTANCE OF HARMONIZATION

OF TRAINING

Even though the IMO, as always, has produced a so

called Model Course, for the CCM-courses,

outlining the recommended contents of the course it

is, as always, up to each individual administration to

set their own requirements, based on the relevant

part of the STCW - 95. This has led to the

unfortunate situation where there is not only

variation in form, but also in content of the actual

training being performed. Within the European

community course lengths between one day and five

days can be found, all leading to the same type of

certificate. Obviously the contents of these courses

cannot be the same, but yet they are providing the

course participants with the same type of document,

accepted by the authority that has acknowledged the

curriculums.

Another area creating problems is that the STCW –

95 convention not clearly identifies the positions

towards which the training should be given, leading

to a great variation in interpretation between the

national authorities. The result has been that some

flag states demands that all officers onboard should

have gone trough the training whereas others flag

states accepts that only one officer onboard needs to

have passed the full course, giving him the

competence to educate the rest of the staff on his

own. It is also possible to find individual companies

that have, on their own initiative, extended the

training requirements to include the whole crew.

The convention requires that all crew-members

having a role in the evacuation process should have

got a so called Crowd Management Course,

generally given by company officers onboard the

vessels for a maximum of one day.

The STCW has further limited the requirements

for CCM - training to officers and staff serving

onbord passenger vessels and ro-ro passenger vessel,

whereas the need for understanding of human

behaviour and reactions must be considered to be

identical, regardless of type of vessel an officer is

serving onboard. It goes almost without saying that

also office staff ashore, particularly those with duties

within a companies emergency organization, could

benefit from having a basic understanding of these

issues.

3 THE SECURITAS MARE PROJECT – AIMS

Since long there have been various projects within

the European Maritime Educational Society,

supported by the EU, which has had their aim to

create common standards for maritime education and

training. The largest of these projects being the

MARMET, led by the WMU in Malmö, Sweden,

where the goal has been to create common

curriculums for a number of courses, leading to

the Master Mariner and Chief Engineer degrees.

The Communication from the Commission to the

Council and the European Parliament on the training

and recruitment of seafarers, COM (2001) 188,

6.4.2001, clearly identifies the needs for a more

harmonised approach.

Quote

The first challenge for the MET: system is to

provide quality seafarers capable of working on

board high quality ships. To ensure this that this

challenge is met at Community level, it would first

be necessary for the training institutes to carefully

analyze and where necessary, revise their teaching

programmes. It is essential that teaching programmes

meet the overall requirements of the shipping

industry (familiarity with international legislation –

particularly the provisions of the STCW95

Convention and the ISM Code – and with modern

technology) and that they ensure a good knowledge

of the English language. Equally important is closer

alignment of the existing national MET systems,

which could encourage useful cross-fertilization and

result in an overall improvement in the Member

States MET-systems.

Unquote

The SECURITAS MARE has addressed this

particular problem and was aimed to create a

common European standard for this type of training

of seafarers as its main objective. With reference to

the earlier mentioned communication from the

Commission, Member States has been invited to

give adequate priority to maritime training and to

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support maritime initiatives in the field of human

recourses. The project SECURITAS MARES main

objective clearly constitutes such an initiative.

The projects secondary objective has been to

establish a standard for the development of

mandatory training courses for the shipping industry.

There are a number of courses given at maritime

academies and training institutions in all member

states within the community, where the basic

problem of course lengths and contents are more or

less of the same nature as earlier described here. If

the SECURITAS MARE project proved to be a

success, the same method could also be used for

harmonization of every other course where such a

need has been identified.

4 PARTNERS – IMPORTANCE TO ALSO

INCLUDE NEW EU MEMBER STATES

Being a Maritime Academy the goal was of course to

present a course directed towards the needs of the

maritime industry, but at the same time trying to

Already the Nordic project TRYGGT HAV attracted

interest from other institutions around Europe who

had come across information about it, not only from

the maritime world but also from other interested

groups, having a need to formulate a training

curriculum dealing with Crisis management, such as

nurses, ambulance staff and fire brigades. This

encouraged us to continue to develop an application

to Brussels for the formation of a project dealing

with specifically that.

Being a Maritime Academy the goal was of

course to present a course directed towards the needs

of the maritime industry, but at the same time trying

to arrange the curriculum in such a way that the main

modules could be rearranged to suit also any other

groups needs.

When we first announced our intention to

formulate the project to all parties that we thought

would be interested, the respons was almost

overwhelming and we found our self in the position

to be able to carefully select the partners, keeping in

mind the various interests that we wanted to

promote. With the goal in mind to reach an EU-

standard we also wanted to get a partnership

reflecting as many seafaring nations as possible.

We knew that a Leonardo da Vinci project would

not be accepted in Brussels, if it only contained

academies and training institutions, and since we

ourselves had a need to also include administrations,

labour unions and employers in the project to get as

much support from all sectors of the industry as

possible, we where able to include representatives

from these sectors as well.

Since the EU had accepted many new applicant

states as members, with entry dates already set at the

time of application, and since we knew that many of

these states where educating a large number of

seagoing staff, we felt it important to include also

them in a project of this nature. We also knew that

seafarers from a number of these new member states

already where holding position onboard many EU-

flagged vessels it further strengthened our will to be

able to already from the beginning have at least one

partner in the consortium representing one of these

states.

In order to find the most suitable academies to

invite as partner, we made a thorough investigation

into which maritime academy we believed would

have the best chance to influence as many of the

others as possible and found a partner that we felt

would be just right for this purpose.

The partnership thus formulated was the

following,

Kalmar Maritime Academy as project coordinator.

Hochshule Bremen, representing the maritime

education in Germany, with excellent contacts with a

number of other branches in Germany interested in

Crisis management training.

Maritiem Instituut “Willem Barentsz“, representing

maritime education in Holland.

Universidad de Cadiz representing both maritime

and health care education in Spain.

Vestfold College in Norway, also representing both

branches of education in Norway.

Sydväst Polytechnic, Turku Finland also

representing both branches of education.

University of Pireaus, dep. of maritime studies,

giving us access to the whole cluster of Greek

Shipping.

Åland Maritime Institute, Mariehamn Finland,

one of our original project partner.

Maritime Safety and Survival center, Reykjavik,

Iceland, holding the position as chairman for the

international organization of safety training centers

and thus being able to have an influence within this

sector.

IFSMA, International Federation of Ships Master

Associations, filled the requirement to also include

labour unions.

VIKING LINE of Finland, became our partner

representing employers.

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We where also very glad to be able to include The

Swedish Shipping Administration, as partner, thus

meeting the request to have a governmental

organization included in the partnership

Högskolen Buskerud, Norway, educates nurses and

others for different health care positions but is also

primarily Norway’s leading center for Crisis

management studies.

And last but in no way least we found two

partners from one of the member states, that where

willing and able to also take on the role to spread our

project results to the other new member states

Estonian Maritime Academy (Eesti Mereakadeemia)

Tallinn and Tallinn Medical School (Tallinna

Meditsiinikool) was included as partners, giving us

the maximum recommended number of partners.

We felt that we had been able to put together a

very strong partnership and that we therefore should

have a fair chance of success for the work to come.

5 PROJECT PLAN

The project was developed over a period of two and

a half year and started in January 2003 and the end

result was presented in a final report before the 1

July 2005. It was divided into eight work packages

and could be described by the following stages,

− during the spring of 2003, demonstration courses

exemplifying the “Nordic Concept”, where given

in Kalmar, Mariehamn and Turku.

− spring and summer of 2003, a survey of existing

course material, from all countries presently

giving this type of courses was performed.

− during the autumn of 2003, workshops and

seminars was conducted in Greece and Spain to

develop a “best practice” curriculum, to be used

as a base for future work.

At these seminars also representatives from the

shipping industry, local authorities etc was

invited to participate, thus spreading information

about the project to a wider audience.

− In January 2004 a seminar was held onboard one

of our partner VIKING LINES vessels where the

results so far was presented to all interested

parties’, such as several national shipping

authorities, passenger vessel owners and operators,

representatives from the EU: s Maritime Safety

Committee, other institutions and academies not

being pertness of the project and international

media.

− During the spring of 2004, a training course was

conducted, where lecturers went through the

curriculum step-by

step to fully appreciate the

teaching methods and contents, at a so called

Teach-the-Teachers-course.

− From August onwards, a number of courses was

held at all participating academies where local

shipping industry, authorities and others was

invited to participate, all with good results and

feed-back. At one of these courses held in

Holland at the Willem Barentsz Institut Canadian

students, from the CIMET project participated.

− In November a seminar was held in Tallinn,

Estonia, where results was presented. This

seminar had a particular emphasis on inviting all

our new EU members to also conduct this type of

training for their seafarers, using the projects

curriculum.

− The last stage represents spring of 2005, where

further dissemination of results was conducted,

the result presented to IMO’s STW committe,

EMSA and other EU bodies, with a closing

seminar in Vestfold, Norway.

Evaluation of results and working practices was

done constantly during the project and a decision

weather the same model should be used also for

harmonization of other mandatory training courses

was taken by the partners at the end of the project

and put forward as a suggestion to IMO.

6 PRESENT SITUATION

Today the project has been completed, as already

mentioned, with a very positive response from the

participants. Some 150 representatives from the

partners and the shipping industry has participated in

the demonstration and student courses and have been

through the dissemination process in their home

countries. The two workshops where very successful

and both gave us further possibilities to meet with a

large number of representatives from various

industry sectors who all gave us good support for the

work done so far. In addition it could be worth

mentioning that the number of “normal” course

participants in the countries offering the course is

today exceeding 1 000.

The project partners where all very much in favor

of the idea that this way of arranging common

course curriculums can be a model for the future,

particularly if we really want to achieve a truly open

and common labour market within the European

Union.

At the closing meeting the majority of the

partners was in favor of a continuation of the project,

by applying for a so called “Transfer of Innovation”-

project through the Leonardo da Vinci program, with

the ambition to spread the course concept further to

other member countries within the EU and also to

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further strengthen the possibilities for an acceptance

of this way of working with model courses. Ideally

networks of these types should be formed with

partnerships from all over the world, to better reflect

also the cultural differences that may exist between

ways of teaching in different parts of the world.

This “Transfer of Innovation” project, suitably

named SECURITAS MARE II, was granted funding

from the EU last summer, with the best evaluation

reference ever given to a Swedish LdV-project, and

held its “Kick-Off” - meeting in Kalmar last

November.

A strong reference group was also formed around

the project. This group had participation from

several Officers unions, shipping organisations such

as Nordkompass, representing all passenger ferry

operators within the Nordic countries, as well as

some of the partner countries shipping

administrations. Further to these parties directly

involved, other interested parties representing higher

education for police forces, fire brigades and medical

faculties has become members. Some maritime

consultants, navy training centers and ship yards has

also expressed their interest to participate in the

reference group, and all of these has of course also

been invited to the workshops held during the later

faces of the project, and many of them was also

invited again to become members of the new

reference group which have been formed for the next

step of the development.

7 CONCLUSIONS AND POSSIBLE FUTURE

DEVELOPMENTS – IMPORTANCE

OF EMERGENCY TRAINING FOR ALL

CATEGORIES OF STAFF MEMBERS

AND FOR ALL TYPES OF VESSELS

Going back to the Securitas Mare project again,

there was of course also a number of problem areas

to overcome and one of the more difficult problem

that was facing the project was to get an acceptance

by national authorities in the participating countries

for this new course, that in most cases already had

been given acceptance to courses with a somewhat

different content.

Within the project group we where perhaps to

pessimistic about this aspect. What actually had

happened, was that already at the end of project

time, the course had gained acceptance in Sweden,

Estonia , Finland and Iceland and was in the process

of getting acceptance in Holland and Spain.

The project has, as mentioned earlier, set the goal

to become the first course accepted by EMSA and to

get support by the same organisation. With this in

mind both EMSA and the relevant national

authorities was invited to participate in all seminars

and courses that was planned to take place during the

project period. Unfortunately EMSA, on an early

stage declared that the educational side of safety was

not something they wanted to prioritize and they

have therefore declined to participate although they

wanted to follow the results and asked to be kept

informed. We expect to able to change this during

the next face of the project.

The requirement for this type of training is

presently only directed towards key staff onboard

passenger vessels and ro-ro passenger vessels. There

is no doubt that there is a clear need for other

persons onboard to also get the type of training that a

course of this nature will provide them with. This is

particularly true for personnel onboard vessel with

very small crews, where each and every one will be

heavily involved and engaged should an emergency

situation ever occur.

One could of course also argue that any officer

onboard a vessel, being by rank and tradition in a

position where he has a responsibility for other

persons, would need some basic understanding of

human reactions and crisis management. Regardless

of what kind of vessel he or she will be serving on

an officer with a clear responsibility to act and react

during any type of crisis situation would benefit

from having learnt more about human behaviour

under stress and in difficult situations, as well as

leadership and guidance under such circumstances.

It as a clear shortcoming of our present

educational system that these skills have not yet

become mandatory for all officers and also for all

officer to be, i.e. the students at maritime academies.

Another of the projects secondary goals is therefore

also to give suggestions for how this could be

achieved.

The persons ashore, belonging to a company’s

emergency team will also need to be trained, There

is today no formal requirement for these persons to

go through training for emergency situations, even

though some countries and certain charterers has put

up their own requirements. Some companies has, on

their own initiative let persons from the emergency

teams go through CCM-courses together with their

seagoing staff, initiatives that has got a strong

positive response from the course participants.

With very small alterations the CCM-courses

could also be given in a specialized form to such

emergency teams, allowing them to get a more

thorough understanding of how they could better

assist and support their vessels in an emergency.

It may be time now to also put formal requirements

for training also for the persons working ashore

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in a shipping companies organization, as it has been

for the seafaring staff for many years.

One must of course also mention the secondary

objective of the project, which was to create a

standard form for creation of mandatory training

courses for the maritime industry.

If we, the partners of the project, will be able to

succeed with our main objective, we believe that we

already by doing so, has set an example that would

be worthwhile following also for all other types of

training courses for our seagoing staff. This

particular aspect will be emphasized to the IMO’s

STW committee during their next session, since we

in the project group believe that the success of the

project speaks for itself in this respect.

For anyone who would like to know more about

the project SECURITAS MARE and its

continuation, SECURITAS MARE II, I have brought

with me some brochures and I also invite you all to

visit the projects own home page.

REFERENCES

http://securitasmare.sjofartshogskolan.nu