6 November, 2017 – MarTID – the Maritime Training Insights Database — a historic initiative to study global maritime training practices — launches today.

There is broad agreement that as much as 80% of maritime accidents involve human factors causes. As such, top vessel operators and maritime training centers are pouring significant resources into creating best practice and innovative training programs.

This is good.

To a large degree, however, the industry as a whole, knows little about the training approaches and successes of vessel operators and training centers outside personal circles. This means that each training leader is left to his or her own devices to invent and design their best practice training approach. This siloed, rather than collaborative approach dooms each operator to find their own way and repeat the mistakes of others. On a global scale, it means that we cannot benchmark our training approaches and learn from the successes of other industry players. It also means that industry training approaches will mostly advance by individual original effort, not by continually improving on the state of the art. In a sense, this is surprising because as training experts, we should be hard-wired to learn from the experiences of others. Too often we are failing to do so.
With your help, this is all about to change.

What is MarTID?
MarTID – the Maritime Training Insights Database, is a new non-commercial initiative collaboratively founded by the World Maritime University, New Wave Media and Marine Learning Systems. Its core principles include ethical integrity, objectivity and confidentiality. Each of these organizations is donating its time and resources to make this initiative possible. We are doing this because we believe that sharing information benefits the entire industry.

MarTID will contain anonymized and secure data on industry training practices, foci, and outcomes. It will continually grow in depth and value as a resource through the administration of an annual maritime training practices survey. This database will provide a global picture of maritime training that is not currently available anywhere. It will provide invaluable data on current and emerging training trends and techniques, staffing models, training focus areas, training tools, training resource allocation, assessment practices and so on. It will be an incredible resource to allow each organization to benchmark their own practices, and for governments and other regulatory agencies to be more informed and effective in their oversight and support of the industry. It will help highlight training issues and training successes, and disseminate that information quickly and broadly. The bottom line for training administrators is that it will allow each to make better decisions by benchmarking their own training practices against what is happening in the industry. This makes the industry safer and more efficient, benefiting everyone.

Every year following the survey, a series of reports will be published broadly. These reports will provide both high-level and deep-dive information covering both broad trends as well as deep coverage of emerging issues and successes. We believe that these reports will grow to be a highly anticipated source of information each year.

Your help can make the difference
Although this initiative has been founded and run by the three partner organizations, it requires community involvement to succeed. You will be hearing a lot about MarTID in the coming weeks and months, but right now, we need your help. Specifically:

• If you work at a vessel operator or maritime training facility, please make your senior training administrator aware of this important survey by sharing this article with them.
• If you are a senior training administrator of a vessel operator or training facility, we need you to complete a survey on behalf of your organization. Please send questions to info@MarTID.org or take the survey at www.martid.org/survey.

We believe that the annual collection and analyses of training data will help the maritime community gain insights that can lead to enhanced policy-setting, decision-making, benchmarking and operational optimization by industry operators and regulatory authorities at all levels. We hope that the survey data and its analyses will become an important and authoritative source of knowledge for the global maritime community. Therefore, we thank you in advance for contributing to this important body of knowledge.

Your insights are needed. Please take the MarTID Survey @ www.martid.org/survey

MarTID Founders:

• World Maritime University
  https://www.wmu.se/
• Marine Learning Systems
  https://www.marinels.com/
• New Wave Media
  https://www.marinelink.com