A review of technology, infrastructure and human competence of maritime stakeholders on the path towards autonomous short sea shipping

Shipping is fast moving towards digitalisation and minimising human intervention in its processes. This article intends to explore the implications of such changes in human element competencies across core-stakeholders such as Ports, Vessel Traffic Services (VTS) and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) providers. It is apparent from the findings of this article that digitalisation is assisting stakeholders to be efficient and competitive. This trend is complementing the implementation of autonomous ships that depends on stakeholders for safe and efficient operations. However, as stakeholders continue to automate the processes previously performed by humans, the required physical and manual skills of employees would decline. Alternatively, future employees would require multitasking and cross-functional competence at all levels. It is also evident that future employees of these stakeholders would require to have a degree of technological competence to be to perform their jobs.