Seminar demonstrates a new approach to knowledge sharing in maritime operations

A new Knowledge Management System may help train seafarers in future, according to speakers at seminar held in London last week to demonstrate a new approach to knowledge sharing in maritime operations. The event presented the results of a two-year study by a multi-national team.‘We need a system that will help manage information, processes and knowledge in the shipping sector. Useful information often resides in various documents, projects, processes, and most of the time in people’s heads. Too frequently this knowledge is either not stored or is difficult to retrieve when necessary. Information about practices usually reside in a particular individual’s head and is even more difficult to capture and use,’ said Prof Becker-Heins of Bremen University in his address.Uwe Zellmer, project chairman, recently of Hanseatic Shipping, Cyprus addressed the heart of the matter. He said, ‘Shipping will benefit from better qualified seafarers. Bringing a structure to unstructured information in knowledge capture and creation will enable successful patterns to be recognised and stored as best practises’.He added, ‘This will foster innovation from the knowledge – brainstorm, apply tacit knowledge to existing problems, develop new techniques, processes and products