An Integrative Approach for Digitalization Challenges of the Future Maritime Specialists: A Case Study of the Lithuanian Maritime Academy

Rapid changes in technologies and digitalization challenges caused by Industry 4.0 with the integration of the AI, machine learning algorithms, internet of things’ technologies, introduction of maritime autonomous surface ships and the development of digital shipping and logistics processes require proper education and training of specialists working in maritime industry to ensure safety and security of people, oceans, goods and environment. The shipping and logistic processes and operations, including the decision-making processes, on the global scale and on the scale of whole-organisation ecosystems become more dependent on the manipulation of data from different unstructured open sources and private data sets, increased amount of data stream from sensorial systems. The specialists working with automated systems need competences to use and interpret special data, engineering and analysis algorithms, and skills in using modelling tools of optimised solutions in shipping and logistics. Educational institutions have to be ready to present effective solutions to educate quickly adaptable specialists able to meet volatile labour market needs able to meet digitalization challenges. The case study of the Lithuanian Maritime Academy (LMA) presented in the paper is based on the use of an integrative approach and work integrated learning with the aim of enabling the educational environment to develop proper competencies of the specialists of shipping and logistics information systems