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1 INTRODUCTION

Maritime traffic in the Arctic has increased

significantly in recent years. Diminishing sea-ice

extent, reduced ice cover and ice severity, and longer

open-water seasons create new opportunities for

maritime transportation but also new challenges. The

growing interest in Arctic resources and shipping

routes has been accompanied by an expansion of

fishing, tourism, and research activities in this region,

while the increased traffic also leads to concerns about

safety and environmental impacts from these activities.

The growth in maritime activity is well

documented, as the Arctic Council’s Working Group

on the Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment

(PAME) reports that the number of ships entering the

Arctic Polar Code area rose from approximately 1,300

in 2013 to 1,781 in 2024, an increase of 37% over eleven

years, while approximately 500 additional unique

vessels have been involved [28]. The distance sailed

increased even more between 2013 and 2019 alone, as

the total nautical miles sailed rose 75% from 6.51 to 9.5

million nautical miles. The report confirms continuing

growth thereafter, with bulk carrier distances up 160%

Cold Climate Maritime Engineering: The Need for

Development of Educational Materials

M.P. Sollid

, K. Johansen

, M. Hammer

& O.T. Gudmestad

1,2

UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway

Norway and University of Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway

ABSTRACT: Maritime activity in the Arctic has increased significantly due to declining sea ice, longer open-water

seasons, and growing interest in shipping, tourism, fisheries, and natural resources. While these developments

create new opportunities, they also increase operational, environmental, and safety challenges in remote and

vulnerable regions. This paper argues for the development of a dedicated one-year, 60-ECTS programme in cold-

climate maritime engineering to address competency gaps in current maritime education and training (MET) for

Arctic operations. The objective of the study is to present key learning requirements based on real challenges and

threats as a result of increased activity. The study draws on historical polar maritime accidents, Arctic search-

and-rescue exercises, and evaluations of Polar Code training. Case studies, including Maxim Gorkiy (1989),

Explorer (2007), Northguider (2018), and Ocean Explorer (2023), reveal recurring challenges related to grounding,

ice navigation, emergency response, remoteness, and organizational decision-making. Although accident rates

relative to traffic appear to have declined after the introduction of the IMO Polar Code, grounding remains the

dominant accident type in Arctic passenger shipping. The paper argues that existing international training

standards are insufficient for the complexity of polar operations. To address this, the proposed curriculum

combines theoretical instruction, simulator training, laboratory exercises, and case-based learning grounded in

resilience and professional competence formation. The programme is organized into six modules covering Arctic

operations, marine technology, safety, resilience, and emergency preparedness. The paper concludes that

strengthening Arctic maritime resilience requires not only regulation and technology, but also specialized

education adapted to the realities of cold-climate operation.

http://www.transnav.eu

the International Journal

on Marine Navigation

and Safety of Sea Transportation

Volume 20

Number 2

June 2026

DOI: 10.12716/1001.20.02.23

498

and continued increases for fishing, general cargo, and

cruise vessels. Müller et al. [26] estimate that

aggregated annual growth is approximately 7% over

the past decade and that the time vessels spend

operating under hazardous weather and sea-ice

conditions has tripled, which is driven by increased

winter sailing. Fishing vessels remain the single largest

category, representing approximately 41% of unique

ships in the Polar Code area, and the number of general

cargo ships is the second largest. The cruise activity has

increased with respect to passenger capacity and also

in the geographic extension of operations, mainly from

calls at Longyearbyen toward expedition cruising

along the Northeast Greenland coast and

circumnavigation of Svalbard.

In recent years, more focus has been channeled

towards maritime safety due to the introduction of the

Polar Code [13] and other national, international, and

industrial regulations. The regulatory regimes for

maritime traffic in the Arctic region are nevertheless

still complex and dispersed. There should be a

recognized increase in need for further specialized

skills to handle these challenges, where this paper

argues that such skills could be formed through a

coherent, modular cold-climate maritime engineering

programme and grounded in the historical records of

polar maritime accidents and Arctic resilience.

2 MARITIME ACCIDENTS IN ARCTIC WATERS

2.1 Resilience as a course outcome

Arctic maritime operations are shaped by a tightly

coupled set of environmental, technical, human, and

systemic challenges that together raise operational risk

and complexity. Climate-driven loss and variability of

sea ice is the dominant environmental driver: reduced

ice extent opens new navigation windows and routes,

but increases seasonal unpredictability and exposure

to weather extremes and remnant ice hazards [27].

Key operational hazards include marine icing (sea-

spray and atmospheric icing), rapidly changing ice

conditions, limited survey and hydrographic coverage,

long distances from search-and-rescue (SAR) and

salvage services, and fragile ecosystems with low

capacity for recovery after spills or accidents [32, 27].

Technological and design challenges arise because

vessels and port infrastructure must operate in extreme

cold, contend with ice accretion on superstructures,

and satisfy polar class and ice-strength requirements.

Anti- and de-icing technologies and ice-resilient design

choices are therefore essential but not universally

implemented [32].

Human and organizational factors further

complicate the operations: human factors and

ergonomics (HF/E), including bridge design,

workload, crew scheduling, communication, and

interface design, have a measurable influence on safety

and efficiency in Arctic ship operations and should be

integrated early in ship design and operational

planning [24].

Finally, the Arctic maritime system is embedded in

global supply chains; port disruptions or accidents can

propagate widely, exposing systemic

interdependencies and economic vulnerability.

Scenario-based and input–output modeling

demonstrates how port inoperability can cascade

through regional and national economies [43].

Arctic maritime resilience is defined as the capacity

of the coupled socio-technical-ecological system of

Arctic shipping and coastal communities to anticipate,

absorb, adapt to, and rapidly recover from

disturbances such as physical shocks, operational

accidents, environmental incidents, and systemic

supply-chain disruptions, while preserving essential

functions and livelihoods.

Resilience requires multiple dimensions:

− Physical and technical robustness (ice-class ships,

infrastructure, de-icing systems)

− Operational readiness (route planning, contingency

procedures, SAR coordination)

− Governance and regulation (multi-level adaptive

policy frameworks)

− Social capacity (community preparedness,

Indigenous knowledge)

− Ecological safeguards (pollution prevention and

ecosystem monitoring)

Resilience cannot rely on a single measure but

depends on redundancy, situational awareness, data-

sharing, and integrated governance across

stakeholders [27, 43].

Quantitative resilience assessment in Arctic systems

includes probabilistic and network-based methods

such as Bayesian networks for accident scenario

analysis, composite resilience indices, and systems-

level vulnerability modeling. These approaches help

identify causal chains and support targeted mitigation

strategies [1].

Education and training are critical for building

resilience due to the interaction between technology,

people, and institutions.

2.2 Overview

Maritime accidents in polar regions are caused by a

combination of operational, environmental, and

organisational stressors that rarely occur together

elsewhere. We have ice in many forms, prolonged

darkness, sea spray icing, sub-zero temperatures,

unreliable hydrographic information, polar lows,

intermittent communications, and great distances to

search-and-rescue (SAR) infrastructure [18, 25]. The

cases described below span over thirty-five years of

incidents in the Arctic and Antarctic, and they have

been selected because each illustrates a different

combination of these factors. Together, they constitute

an empirical foundation for the modular course

described in section 5.

2.3 Accident trends 2010–2024: pre and post Polar Code

Before turning to the qualitative case material, it is

useful to establish a broader statistical context. Figure

1 below shows the annual count of reported ship-

casualty accidents in Arctic waters between 2010 and

2024, drawn from a maritime casualty database

covering vessels operating in the Norwegian, Icelandic,

Russian Arctic, the Bering Sea, the Canadian Arctic,

and Alaska reporting zones. Data from Lloyd’s List

499

Intelligence / Sea-web casualty records have been used

by the authors to prepare the statistics. Personal injury,

such as illness/fatality/injury, overboard, maritime

arrest, and cargo damage, has been excluded because

they were under-reported in the pre-2017 part of the

dataset and would affect the totals after the Polar Code

entered into force.

Figure 1. Reported ship-casualty accidents in Arctic waters

by year, 2010–2024. The vertical reference line marks the

entry into force of the IMO Polar Code on 1 January 2017.

Annual means for the pre-Polar-Code (2010–2016) and post-

Polar-Code (2017–2024) periods are shown as horizontal

reference lines.

Two observations can be seen from the figure: the

annual count is essentially flat across the fifteen years,

with a small decline in absolute frequency from a pre-

Polar Code mean of 57 accidents per year compared to

a post-Polar-Code mean of 50 per year (−12%). Against

the traffic context summarised in section 1, there is a

37% increase in ships and a substantially larger

increase in distance sailed during the same period [29,

26]. This absolute decline corresponds to a substantial

reduction in the per-ship accident rate.

The Polar Code, taken together with parallel

developments in vessel technology, ice-aware

navigation practice, and improved SAR infrastructure,

appears to have absorbed much of the additional risk

that the increase in maritime traffic growth would

otherwise have produced.

Figure 2. Annual mean number of reported accidents by

event subtype, comparing the pre-Polar-Code period (2010–

2016) with the post-Polar-Code period (2017–2024). Same

data source as Figure 1.

Figure 2 above utilizes the same data by accident

type and shows a more nuanced picture. Stranding

(grounding) fell from an annual mean of 15.6 to 8.0, a

49% reduction, which is consistent with improved ice-

aware passage planning, ECDIS adoption, and Polar

Code-driven competence. Hull and machinery

damage, the largest category, also declined moderately

(−8%). Collisions and contact with fixed objects were

more or less unchanged. Most strikingly, fire and

explosion events rose by 59%, from an annual mean of

4.7 to 7.5. Note that this is a category that the Polar

Code addresses less directly than navigation. The

signal is mixed and important as the Polar Code

appears to be working for the operational

competencies it was designed to develop, but the

reduction does not extend to all accident types, and the

dominant accident in polar passenger shipping, i.e.,

grounding, continues to occur. The Northguider,

Mikhail Somov, and Ocean Explorer cases discussed

below were all post-Polar-Code groundings. The

remainder of section 2 examines these cases

qualitatively to identify the specific operational and

organisational factors that contributed to the accidents.

2.4 Maxim Gorkiy (19 June 1989, Greenland Sea,

southwest of Svalbard)

The Soviet cruise liner Maxim Gorkiy was on a Phoenix

Reisen voyage from Bremerhaven via Iceland and

Spitsbergen when, near midnight on 19 June 1989, she

struck an ice floe in heavy fog approximately 180

nautical miles southeast of the Svalbard archipelago.

The collision opened two gashes in the starboard hull,

and the ship listed and began taking water. A

coordinated rescue led by the Joint Rescue

Coordination Centre (JRCC) North Norway, supported

by the Norwegian Coast Guard vessel KV Senja,

additional helicopters, and Soviet vessels. They

evacuated 575 passengers and several hundred crew

without loss of life [12, 42]. This incident remains a

foundational case in Arctic SAR training because it

exposed every link in the mass-rescue chain at once,

which includes alerting, on-scene coordination,

lifeboat-and-floe evacuation in near-freezing water,

helicopter shuttling, host-nation cooperation, and

triage of survivors against limited berthing capacity

[18]. Lessons that remain pedagogically central include

the importance of fast alarming, as the JRCC was

alerted approximately thirty minutes after impact. This

clearly states the value of having redundant rescue

assets within reach, and the limitations of immersion

suits and lifeboats designed primarily for temperate

latitudes.

2.5 M/V Explorer (23 November 2007, Bransfield Strait,

Antarctic Peninsula)

The Liberian-registered expedition cruise vessel M/V

Explorer, operated by GAP Adventures, was the first

cruise ship lost in Antarctic waters. Shortly after

midnight on 23 November 2007, the ship entered an ice

field near the South Shetland Islands and struck what

her master initially identified as first-year ice but which

was, in fact, harder glacial ice. The damage extended

for at least 3.6 m along the hull plating, and progressive

flooding through internal compartments could not be

contained. All 154 persons on board were evacuated

from the ship into lifeboats and were rescued by the

nearby cruise ship MS Nord Norge in calm weather

[21]. The official report places the primary causation

and responsibility on the master’s misinterpretation of

ice type, compounded by speed not being reduced on

the approach to the ice area. The report identifies the

absence of internationally agreed competency

standards for ice navigation under the STCW

Convention as a systemic factor. The Explorer is a

500

relevant case for teaching ice recognition, the

difference between cold-water survivability

assumptions and Antarctic reality, and the reliance on

bystander shipping for evacuation in an environment

without dedicated SAR.

2.6 MS Nordkapp (30 January 2007, Deception Island,

Antarctic Peninsula)

Ten months before the Explorer sinking, Hurtigruten’s

cruise vessel MS Nordkapp grounded on rocks while

approaching Whalers Bay, inside the flooded caldera of

Deception Island. The 11,386-GT vessel sustained a

hull gash but continued under her own power, while

294 passengers were transferred to her sister ship MS

Nord Norge for transit back to Ushuaia. Although

there were no injuries among the passengers, between

500 and 750 liters of light marine diesel were released

into Whalers Bay, with hydrocarbons subsequently

detected along an approximately five-kilometer stretch

of shoreline [2]. From a teaching perspective, the MS

Nordkapp case is valuable because it was a "minor"

event, but it demonstrates how easily a tourist call can

produce ecological harm in an Antarctic Specially

Protected Area. Further, it illustrates the inadequacy of

generic oil-spill response equipment in a remote and

ice-affected environment.

2.7 Northguider (28 December 2018, Hinlopen Strait,

Svalbard)

The Norwegian shrimp trawler Northguider grounded

at approximately 80°N on 28th of December 2018,

while engaged in winter shrimp fishing inside the

Nordaustlandet Nature Reserve east of the Spitsbergen

island. The fourteen-person crew was rescued by

helicopter lifts from the Governor of Svalbard’s two

SAR helicopters in temperatures around −23 °C. The

rescue operation took place during the polar night,

with snow showers reducing visibility — conditions

later described by Norwegian authorities as "at the far

limit of what was possible" [18]. The vessel was a total

loss; 300 tonnes of diesel were removed by KV

Svalbard before the wreck was eventually dismantled

in situ in 2020. A subsequent court ruling fined the

master and the owner, Opilio AS, for negligent

navigation and an inadequate safety management

system, citing operations in conditions of darkness,

low temperatures, ice, poor charting, weak radio

coverage, and long distances to rescue. Northguider is

a pedagogically significant case for two reasons - it

demonstrates that the sharp-end risk picture in

commercial fishing differs from that in passenger

shipping, and it provides a parallel to Maxim Gorkiy

that allows students to compare SAR resources and

outcomes across thirty years of Arctic operations [18].

2.8 Ocean Explorer (11–14 September 2023, Alpefjord,

Northeast Greenland)

The expedition cruise ship Ocean Explorer (Bahamas

flag) operated by Aurora Expeditions, grounded in

Alpefjord, in the Northeast Greenland National Park,

on the afternoon of 11 September 2023, with 206

persons onboard. The grounding occurred on the

moraine of a glacier in an area considered poorly

hydrographically charted. The nearest Danish patrol

asset, HDMS Knud Rasmussen, was approximately

1,200 nautical miles away when the alarm was raised.

After three days, the ship was pulled free at high tide

on 14 September with assistance from the Greenlandic

research trawler Tarajoq. Luckily, there were no

injuries, no hull breach, and no pollution released to

the environment. Despite the outcome without severe

consequences, this case has high value during the

teaching of the modules. It demonstrates that even

modern and polar-class expedition vessels operating

with experienced crews remain exposed to incomplete

bathymetric data in remote fjords, and that response

time from official rescue assets is measured in days

rather than hours.

2.9 Ocean 28 (October 2024, Northern Sea Route)

The Ocean 28 event was not an accident, but it

documents a near-miss where the value for teaching is

precisely that it shows how regulatory and commercial

pressures can place a vessel into a hazardous regime

before any failure has occurred. The 154-meter-long,

Panama-flagged Chinese heavy-lift carrier departed

Zhangjiagang on 24 September 2024 carrying a power-

generation module that was bound for the Arctic LNG

2 project at Utrenny on the Gulf of Ob. The vessel

transited the Northern Sea Route under the permission

from the Northern Sea Route (NSR) Administration

with required icebreaker escort "in ice-free water and

light ice conditions" only, while sea ice in the Laptev

Sea was rapidly expanding, and only one nuclear

icebreaker was reported active in the eastern sector

[41]. The case is useful in several ways as it illustrates

how ice-class and operational permissions can be

misaligned with prevailing conditions, and the case

represents the type of latent Arctic accidents that

teaching modules on Polar Code, such as ice

management and ice navigation, are designed to

prevent.

2.10 Synthesis

Read together, these seven cases display three

recurring patterns. First, environmental conditions do

not cause accidents on their own, because in every case

there is a decision: to enter ice, to maintain speed, to

fish in a poorly charted bay in darkness, to accept a

route permission, and so on, taken by a sharp-end

operator under organisational pressure [33, 23].

Second, the consequences of those decisions are

amplified by the remoteness, where the same decision

in the North Sea would not require a 1,200-nautical-

mile response distance, helicopter shuttling at −23 °C,

or the use of bystander tourist vessels for mass

evacuation. Third, the lessons accumulate slowly. The

thirty years passing between Maxim Gorkiy and

Northguider, and the further five years to Ocean

Explorer, mark cases where similar SAR challenges

had to be solved again, with similar improvisation.

These three patterns contribute to shaping the syllabus

argued for in the next section.

2.11 Beyond accidents — evidence from controlled

exercises

Three full-scale Search and Rescue exercises conducted

by the Norwegian Coast Guard in cooperation with the

501

University of Stavanger were conducted between 2016

and 2018. SAREX 1 [37], SAREX 2 [38], and SAREX 3

[39], provide complementary evidence on what can be

expected to go wrong under a future Arctic evacuation

scenario. The exercises tested the functionality of the

IMO Polar Code Chapter 8 requirement, which states

that abandoned persons should survive for a minimum

of five days in lifesaving appliances. SAREX 1 ran a

"Maxim Gorkiy scenario" off northwest Spitsbergen

using KV Svalbard as mother vessel, with cross-

disciplinary participation from the Norwegian Coast

Guard, classification societies, equipment

manufacturers, medical specialists, and academic

institutions. During SAREX 2, the rescue equipment

was modified and considerably improved. SAREX 3

studied the effect of rescuing the people to shore rather

than staying in lifeboats and life rafts.

The findings repeat across all three exercises and

have direct implications for the syllabus. First, none of

the SOLAS-approved lifesaving appliances tested

could be expected to deliver five-day survival under

representative cruise-season conditions in the Svalbard

area. Lifeboat occupants experienced severe heat loss

through the hull structure and oxygen depletion when

the engine was shut down. Persons in a life raft

suffered progressive reduction of body temperature as

a result of condensation buildup and combined with

floor heat loss [37]. Second, the difference between

groups in SAREX 3 was driven less by equipment than

by leadership, where groups with leaders who

managed rations, activity levels, and morale, and

intervened early on signs of fatigue, fared substantially

better than groups with comparable equipment but

weaker leadership [39]. Third, current personal

protective equipment loses much of its insulating

capability when wet, and the fine motor skills required

for survival tasks, like pitching tents, operating stoves,

and administering first aid, are incompatible with the

neoprene gloves provided as standard. These are

examples of findings that are pedagogically significant

because they show that competence formation for

Arctic operations must address dispositional and

adaptive skills that cannot be acquired through

certificate-based equipment training alone, a point

taken up further in section 2.1.

Furthermore, the exercises showed that fresh air

must be ensured inside the rescue means, as the large

group in the enclosed lifeboats and life rafts necessary

in the cold climate emits dangerous levels of CO.

Survival in cold weather also requires energy to keep

up the body temperature, and water is needed in

sufficient quantities, higher than normally provided on

board the life-saving means.

3 ARGUMENTATION FOR AN ENHANCED

COURSE SYLLABUS

These cases above expose competencies that are not

reliably acquired through the present international

minimum standards for maritime education and

training (MET). The IMO STCW Convention, including

the Polar Code amendments, requires baseline

knowledge for ice navigators but leaves substantial

freedom in how those requirements are met

institutionally [13].

A clear skill gap emerges directly from the case

material in section 2, as the Explorer master was an

experienced Baltic ice navigator, but Baltic first-year ice

and Antarctic glacier ice are different objects [21]. The

Northguider master held a valid certificate of

competence, but the safety management system aboard

had not identified the combined hazard profile of

darkness, vessel drift, and ice in the Hinlopen

environment. These cases point to a shared deficiency,

that standard maritime training programmes assume

that competency in one domain transfers to others, and

that paper-level certification is only sufficient evidence

of preparedness to operate in the high Arctic.

The dominant accident type in Arctic passenger

shipping reinforces this point. Sollid, Gudmestad, and

Solberg (2018) report that 17 of 19 registered passenger

vessel accidents in the Spitsbergen area between 1981

and 2017 were groundings, and that across the wider

Arctic, the proportion is similar, where 499 of 788

accidents north of 60°N in Greenland between 1990

and 2012 were groundings, of which 85 involved

passenger ships. Grounding is not a rare event in polar

passenger operations, but it seems to be the modal

failure mode. Macrae [22] further analyses the human

factors underlying grounding accidents and finds that

30.3% of triggering factors are insufficient passage

planning, 18.2% interpretation errors, and 15.2%

communication failures, with 81.9% of planning

failures related to personal violation rather than to lack

of resources. These examples suggest that even

substantial increases in technical equipment provision

will under-deliver if the underlying competency in

passage planning, situational interpretation, and

bridge communication has not been formed in the first

place.

Three recent peer-reviewed evaluations of Polar

Code training validate the case for an enhanced

syllabus. Chaure and Gudmestad [3] characterize the

existing Basic and Advanced training modules as

ineffective with respect to actual evacuation needs, and

they also identify a complete absence of any required

passenger survival training. Fedi, Faury, and Gritsenko

(2018) describe a "Polar Code paradox" in which the

Code provides a useful general framework but

contains substantial unsolved gaps as advanced

training is not required for all crew members.

Furthermore, fishing and leisure vessels are excluded

from mandatory provisions, and pollution risks are

inadequately addressed. Johannsdottir and Cook [14],

reviewing systemic risk in cruise ship incidents from

an Arctic perspective, observe that the discretion

afforded to flag states and ship owners in defining the

substance of safety standards undermines the

consistency of training delivery. These three

evaluations make it clear that the Polar Code’s present

syllabus is not sufficient on its own to close the

competency gap described by the few cases above. This

is a finding that motivates curriculum development of

the kind proposed here.

Further, two competency areas are under-

represented in current education programmes. The

first is the integration of national and local regulation.

For example, operations in Svalbard waters are

governed not only by SOLAS, MARPOL, and the Polar

Code but also by the Svalbard Environmental Act, the

Governor of Svalbard’s instructions, AECO industry

guidelines, and protected-area restrictions including

502

the Nordaustlandet Nature Reserve (where

Northguider grounded). A maritime engineer

educated for cold-climate operations must be able to

navigate this regulatory forest as competently as the

physical environment. The second area is the

sustainability of the fragile ecosystems. The Nordkapp

diesel release was small in tonnage but consequential

in context, and the risk discussions of Arctic LNG

transport, seabed minerals exploitation, and the

continued growth of expedition cruise tourism will

require operators and engineers who can reason about

ecological reversibility rather than only about

engineering and operative reversibility.

The remoteness that complicates rescue equally

complicates oil-spill response, salvage, and personnel

evacuation. The Arctic and Antarctic ecosystems are

fragile, meaning that pollution loads tolerable

elsewhere here will produce long-term contamination.

Avoiding large-scale accidents is therefore not a pure

human consideration but also operational and

economic. Prevention through training should have a

higher relative return on investment in polar

operations than elsewhere. This is consistent with the

wider argument by Saleh and Pendley [34] that

engineering education must move from "learning from

accidents" as a research activity to "teaching about

accident causation and prevention".

Pedagogically, the case for a dedicated syllabus

aligns with Shulman’s (2005) concept of signature

pedagogies, discussed in Section 4 below. Cold-climate

maritime engineering, as an emerging professional

sub-domain, should require its own signature

pedagogy. A structured combination of classroom

instruction in the physical and regulatory frameworks,

simulator training for ice navigation and bridge

resource management in polar conditions, and case-

based analytical work, drawing on the historical

records summarized above. Without this focus on a

combination of different competences, certificates may

be issued without actual competence being learned.

With it, one would be more on the safe side for a

syllabus that is closing the specific gaps that the Arctic

and Antarctic incident record makes visible.

In summary, the argument for an enhanced

syllabus rests on observations: (i) competencies for

cold-climate operations are absent from current

training, as evidenced by the recurring causal patterns

in the cases above, (ii) grounding remains the modal

accident type in polar passenger shipping, with

planning and interpretation failures dominant in

causation [40, 22], (iii) peer-reviewed evaluations of

Polar Code training itself report ineffectiveness for

evacuation preparedness [3, 6], (iv) national and local

regulatory frameworks impose specific obligations not

transmitted through international minima, (v) the

consequences of large-scale accidents are

disproportionately severe in polar regions, raising the

marginal value of prevention and (vi) the pedagogical

form of the syllabus must itself be consistent with how

professional competence is formed [36, 19]. These

points motivate the modular structure described in

Section 5.

4 PEDAGOGICAL APPROACH

The pedagogical approach to the modules is

implemented through a combination of theoretical and

practice-oriented learning activities. More specifically,

a combination of conventional classroom instruction

followed by simulator-based and laboratory-based

activities, comparable to the model of “Maritime

education and training (MET)” for modern ship officer

education [16].

Use of combined teaching methods applies to

multiple professional “signature” educational

programs aimed at specific occupations such as law,

nursing, and medicine [35]. Educating maritime

officers, and related to this article, specialized MET

within the profession, requires certain specificities

concerning instructional methods. When linking such

distinctive pedagogical practices to educational or

subject-specific didactic theories, Lee Shulman’s

concept of signature pedagogies is particularly

relevant. Signature pedagogies describe the

instructional activities that lay the foundation for

students’ subsequent professional practice. The

characteristics of selecting specific occupationally

relevant teaching methods are that they should bridge

the gap between theoretical knowledge and the

practical tasks students must perform in their

professional practice [36].

The foundation for the theoretical content in the

curricula will be learning linked to previous accidents

and incident cases within the polar seas. More

specifically, characteristics, aspects, and statistical

patterns of recorded cases of maritime accidents

centered around the Arctic and Antarctic oceans.

Contextually, like real-life scenarios, case studies as

described above are therefore utilized to derive new

lessons based on experiences from such previous

events.

Maritime accidents are rarely caused by a single

factor; rather, they typically arise from a series of errors

involving human or technical failures, adverse weather

conditions, or communication breakdowns [4].

Furthermore, the safety aspects in these areas are

important to focus on, as the areas are remote and

characterized by long distances, for example, in search

and rescue operations.

In addition to the focus on case studies, the

foundation for the theoretical content in the curricula

must be adapted to both the ongoing climate change

and the current geopolitical situation. Respectively,

new areas of polar lows [15] and aspects of

cybersecurity.

5 DETAILS AND DISCUSSION OF THE COURSE

MODULES

All lectures are estimated to have a duration of two

lecture hours unless otherwise stated. The lectures

could be arranged otherwise, according to the

requirements of the school.

503

Table 1.

Module/submodule

ECTS /

hours

Content

6.1 Basic considerations:

working in the maritime

Arctic

General foundation for cold-

climate maritime work; sets the

analytical, regulatory, and SAR

vocabulary used by all later

modules.

Background lectures

Course overview: present

challenges for the young marine

engineer; marine and maritime

inventions and innovations; risk

analysis.

General themes

Sustainable use of the Arctic;

human effects in cold climate;

winterization; design basis; effects

of climate change.

Waves in the ocean

Waves basics; irregular waves;

vessel motion; ship stability – basic.

Ice and its effects

Polar low and icing; ice cover; ice

basics; icebergs.

Safety and environment

Search and Rescue (3 hours); fuel

for vessels in cold climates;

cybersecurity; seabed minerals.

6.2 Requirements for the

maritime engineer

Vessel- and operation-centered

engineering competencies;

introduces ice-aware navigation

and the bridge simulator.

Introductory lectures

Introduction to the maritime

module; categories of vessels; ship

technology (ABS reference).

Vessel-specific

Ship stability – advanced; vessel

stability in cold climate; ship

safety; marine operations WOW;

autonomous vessels.

Arctic-specific

Navigation in Arctic seas; transport

in the Arctic; loading from ice;

Polar Code; ice management; the

clean Arctic environment.

Wind turbines

Wind turbine installation;

personnel transfer offshore.

Safety and security

Basics of marine and maritime

safety and security; security issues

in the maritime industry.

Ship simulator

Simulator training exercises (ice-

edge navigation, polar low

encounter, degraded GMDSS).

6.3 Marine technology

Phenomenon-centered engineering

core: hydrodynamics, structures,

design, and reliability for cold-

climate operation.

Introduction

Hydrostatics and hydrodynamics.

Wave loads

Wave-induced loads on vessels

and structures.

Dynamics and vibrations

Dynamics, vortex shedding.

Pipelines

Pipeline behavior in cold-climate

environments.

Positioning and mooring

Positioning and mooring design.

Reliability issues

Reliability of marine systems in the

Arctic.

Design

Arctic design standards and

aspects of marine design.

Offshore wind

Technical challenges for offshore

wind in cold climates.

6.4 Marine operations in

cold climates

Temporal and statistical

dimensions of polar operations —

weather windows, extreme

statistics, motions, and explicit

safety-level selection.

Marine operations –

overview

Overview of marine operations in a

cold climate.

Impact effects

Analysis of impact effects on

vessels and structures.

Ship motions

Heave, roll, RAO.

Modern ship design

Design considerations for modern

Arctic vessels.

Specifics in cold climate

Specifics of marine operations in a

cold climate.

Statistics

Statistics and data distributions.

Wave analysis

Wave analysis; extreme waves.

Weather routing

Weather routing for polar transit.

Operations and

limitations

Marine operations and operational

limitations.

Selection of safety level

Explicit selection of safety level for

polar marine operations.

6.5 Support facilities

onshore and project

execution

Onshore engineering and project-

execution methodology that polar

maritime work depends on, but

vessel-centric MET rarely covers.

Wind engineering

Wind engineering for Arctic

onshore facilities.

Insulation

Insulation for cold-climate

structures.

Snow, ice, and related

aspects

Snow and avalanches; protection

from snow/ice; atmospheric icing.

Ground effects

Freezing and thawing (2);

permafrost (4); geohazards (4);

coastal concerns (4).

Cold-regions hydrology

Cold-regions hydrology.

Project execution

Organization of projects (4);

planning and economy (4); Front-

End Engineering (4); later project

phases (4).

6.6 Arctic emergency and

case studies

Integrative module — case material

first encountered in earlier

modules is now treated as

integrated practice; closes the

programme.

Forgotten lessons

Forgotten lessons from the Arctic.

Communication and

response

Communication in the Arctic:

Arctic emergency response.

Arctic survival

Survival in the Arctic; IMO

operational capabilities and

limitations in ice; AECO guidelines

for cruise operations.

Environment

Arctic environmental regulations;

oil-spill response; regulations for

Svalbard.

Case studies

Titanic; fishing-vessel loss; Maxim

Gorkiy; Helge Ingstad; Explorer;

Northguider; Ocean Explorer.

Each module additionally includes a course or semester

project (≈15 lecture-hour equivalent for course projects, 2.5

ECTS; ≈30 lecture-hour equivalent for semester projects, 5

ECTS), making each module sum to 10 ECTS.

6 DISCUSSION

The IMO Polar Code, together with the 2017 STCW

amendments for ice-water operations, prescribes a

baseline of training requirements that can be met by a

short course of perhaps 5–10 ECTS equivalent [13]. It

would be possible to design a cold-climate add-on

certificate at that scale. Three considerations argue that

the 60-ECTS scope adopted here is justified despite the

longer commitment. First, the case record of section 2

demonstrates that the operational gaps revealed by

Arctic accidents are not addressable by certificate-level

training: the Explorer master held an STCW-compliant

ice-navigator endorsement, and the Northguider

master held a valid certificate of competence for fishing

operations, yet both incidents occurred. Closing the

gap requires reformation of the underlying

engineering and operational competence, not an

additional endorsement on top of unchanged

504

competence. Second, the cross-cutting use of case

material described in sections 4.4 and 7.2 above

requires multiple modules across multiple semesters to

function; concentrating it into a short course collapses

the same case to a single reading and forfeits the multi-

perspective induction that signature pedagogies

require [36]. Third, simulator-based Safety-II training

of the kind argued for in section 2.1 needs sustained

engagement with progressively more demanding

scenarios, which a short supplement cannot provide.

There is a legitimate intermediate option that the

course design supports. Because the syllabus is

modular, individual 10-ECTS modules can be offered

as standalone professional development for officers

and engineers who already hold STCW endorsements,

or a shipping company seeking to upgrade its ice-

experienced fleet officers might commission modules

6.2 and 6.6 only. The programme is therefore best

understood not as a single 60-ECTS course in

competition with STCW, but as a coherent year-long

curriculum that also exposes a stack of standalone

professional modules that complement STCW. The

introductory bachelor-level modules mentioned in the

abstract serve a parallel purpose at the entry side of the

profession.

7 CONCLUSION

This paper has argued that the development of a one-

year, 60-ECTS course in cold-climate maritime

engineering is justified by four converging lines of

evidence: the historical record of polar maritime

accidents (section 2), the empirical record of controlled

cold-climate exercises (section 2.11), the under-

coverage of polar-specific competencies in current

MET (section 3), and the pedagogical requirements of

forming a profession rather than merely certifying it

(section 4). Sections 2.2–2.8 set out seven cases from

Maxim Gorkiy (1989) to Ocean 28 (2024) whose

recurring causal patterns reveal the operational and

organisational competencies the syllabus must deliver.

Section 2.11 summarised the SARex 1, 2, and 3

exercises, which together demonstrate that current

SOLAS-approved equipment and standard maritime

training do not in practice deliver the five-day survival

required by the Polar Code. Section 3 argued that those

competencies are not transmitted reliably through

STCW minima, supported by recent peer-reviewed

evaluations of Polar Code training [3, 6] and by the

dominant Arctic accident pattern of grounding [40].

Section 4 made the case for accident reports as a

primary instructional resource and for their structured

integration into module-level learning outcomes.

Section 4 suggested a pedagogical approach based on

Shulman’s signature pedagogies [36] and Lave and

Wenger’s situated learning [19]. Section 5 described the

modular structure that operationalises these

arguments. Together, these sections could constitute

the case for the syllabus and a starting point for

collaborative refinement with partner institutions and

industry.

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