Philippine stakeholders set out the human factors agenda for safer maritime decarbonisation

The International Safer Maritime Decarbonisation Network held its Philippine regional workshop on Tuesday 13 October 2026, hosted online by Panpacific University. More than forty participants took part over the morning, drawn from maritime higher education institutions and training centres, from shipping and manning companies, and from government agencies including the Philippine Coast Guard and the Maritime Industry Authority.

The workshop took the network's fourth theme, Human Factors and Training, as its subject. It was opened by Dr Donna Padilla-Taguiba, President of Panpacific University, with participants introduced by Capt. Jomer Pascua, Dean of the Panpacific University Merchant Marine Academy. Prof. Osman Turan, Director of the Oldendorff Research Centre for Sustainable Shipping at the University of Strathclyde, then presented "Maritime Net-Zero Goals and Safety Challenges for International Shipping", setting out the initiative, the network, and what the project has found so far on competence, workload and the place of the human operator in the design of new fuel systems.

The main part of the morning belonged to the participants. Three breakout rooms, for academe and training, for shipping and manning, and for government, worked through the same three questions the network puts to every region: what the gaps are, what makes the national context different, and what should be done about it. Dr Jesus Deogracias Principe, Research Director at Panpacific University, prepared and led that discussion, with facilitators and note-takers drawn from the university. The rooms reported back in plenary, and two live surveys were run during the session, before a closing synthesis by Dr Yaser Farag of the University of Strathclyde.

Asking every region the same three questions is deliberate, and it allowed the Philippine discussion to be set directly against evidence gathered elsewhere. At the ISMDN UK Expert Workshop, held at Lloyd's Register headquarters in London in April, 26 experts from 14 organisations concluded that human factors are consistently treated as an afterthought in system design and that training is not keeping pace with the technology being installed on ships. A live poll of around 100 participants at the Global Maritime Congress in Türkiye in September broadly confirmed those findings, and found that seven in ten had not yet worked directly with any alternative fuel. Asked how prepared they felt across five situations, from bunkering to responding to toxic ammonia exposure, not one situation reached the midpoint of the scale; the lowest score of all was for routine operation of an ammonia or hydrogen fuelled ship.

The Philippines supplies a substantial share of the world's seafarers, which makes the question of how they are prepared for ammonia, hydrogen, methanol and the systems that come with them a matter of international rather than national consequence. The same poll in Türkiye recorded its strongest agreement of all with the proposition that early alternative-fuel ships sold on to less experienced operators will create a serious safety risk. Those ships will be crewed from this region.

A workshop report will be sent to everyone who took part, in the same structure as the UK report so that the two can be read side by side. The findings feed the ISMDN Safer Maritime Decarbonisation Roadmap, the project's principal deliverable, and the network's work on regional skill gaps. Panpacific University's work on what belongs in the curriculum continues with the consortium's support, and seminars for cadets and serving seafarers, shaped by the gaps identified during the morning, are planned to follow.

ISMDN is funded by Lloyd's Register Foundation and led by the University of Strathclyde, with nine partner institutions across eight countries. Organisations wishing to join the network can register at ismdn.org/register.