The aim of this project has been to explore future shipping centering around the human operators in the system. The ambition has been to offer a complementary perspective to ongoing technical developments and to put these into a social and organizational context. This report’s purpose has been to provide supportive information to administrations, the shipping industry and maritime vocational programs. Another goal has been to provide a clearer picture of the future, which hopefully will interest more young people for professions in the shipping industry.

The role of human operators in future shipping has been explored based on two complementary perspectives, a sociological and a sociotechnical perspective. The main approach has been to collect, analyze and summarize attitudes, opinions and points of views of relevant actors. Data has been collected through focus groups with the advisory board, active seagoing officer and personnel in the maritime vocational education, as well as interviews with pilots and VTS-personnel. Further a survey was sent to all officers in the Swedish seafarer’s registry. In the beginning, two SWOT analyses (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) were conducted to provide a basis to the development of three different scenarios for future vessel concepts: vessel with less manning, convoy vessels, and vessel that is unmanned and supervised from shore for larger parts of the voyage. The vessel concepts were used in focus groups and semi-structured interviews to analyze the role of human operators, the organization of future traffic, resilience and potential competence demands in future shipping.

The results show that the timeline for the implementation of different vessel concepts will certainly differ depending on the area of operation. The process will occur successively from well-protected test-areas towards routes in open waters. However, it is has been estimated that Swedish un-manned vessel operations in more established form will first be found in territorial coastal waters. The problem of operational responsibility is believed to become particularly difficult with unmanned vessels in international traffic.

However, it has become clear that if the vessels become unmanned, the problem of operational responsibility becomes difficult to solve. Further, the results also show that the Swedish vocational training has the potential to quickly adapt to these changes. The results from the survey show that officers lack confidence and trust in the development towards unmanned traffic.Further, it might be hard to recruit older and more experienced officers to work ashore. However, nautical science and marine engineering student show a more positive attitude towards working in a shore-based center. The FRAM-analysis shows that the complexity of traffic organization and management is likely to increase with the introduction of unmanned vessels. It is anticipated that shore-based centers will not be able to substitute current services, such as pilotage or VTS. Thus, an increased need to communicate and coordinate across actors, such as pilots, VTS, port, may arise.

The project’s results show that the complexity of change in the transport system is likely to require a systems approach to ensure that different perspectives and voices are acknowledge. It is not about developing the right technology, or services, but rather about understanding how various aspects, such as infrastructure, job motivation, competence demands, organization, and leadership will be affected by change.