Admiral Makarov State University of Maritime and Inland Shipping (AMSUMIS) became the first Russian educational institution which integrated into the European Maritime Simulator Network (EMSN). It was announced by Sergey Aysinov, Director of the AMSUMIS Professional Development Programmes Institute at the «Neva-2021» exhibition, which took place in St. Petersburg, Russia at September 21-24.

«The aim of European training centers’ integration is to exchange the best practices in educating navigators and spill response specialists», said Sergey Aysinov. «In the context of the global concept of e-navigation, the idea of the international joint exercises is more than relevant. It would be possible to conduct not only the advanced training of specialists, but also to work out command-staff exercises with the involvement of anti-crisis centers of different countries».

This academic year already brings the bright opportunity to students of advanced training courses of the Professional Development Programmes Institute and maritime cadets to participate in training sessions together with students and specialists from prominent European maritime universities, while teachers and instructors would benefit by exchanging their experience and best methodological practices with colleagues abroad.

Currently, the largest subdivision of the PDP Institute, Makarov Training Centre, is developing effective methods of eliminating the consequences of oil spills in harsh sea conditions in the frames of SIMREC project (Simulators for improving cross-border oil spill response in extreme conditions). The completion of this project in the fall of 2022 will allow the international maritime community to present proven scenarios of oil spill response exercises on the centre’s specialized navigation simulators and integrate them into a unified information environment of the European network of maritime training centres.

The project is implemented jointly with the University of Applied Sciences, South-Eastern Finland (ХAMK) – already an active member of the European Maritime Simulator Network.

The implementation of the project allows Admiral Makarov State University of Maritime and Inland Shipping to become one of the leading European training centers capable of conducting joint online training on forty bridges simultaneously of the 4 largest world navigational simulators manufacturers in 13 educational institutions of 5 countries.