Learning From the Past (LFP) is an important part of making the world safer today. We invited our micro-interns, from the University of Oxford, to dive into our archives to see how we can provide historical context to contemporary safety challenges. Their insights, in the form of short stories, blogs and rapid literature reviews compiled in just 4-5 days, show the potential of the LFP approach.
The Maritime Digital Hub and Connected Places Cataplult, embraced this content, compiling a Retrospective Opinion Piece in response to Sarah Ang's article on Ports and their Hinterland - read more here. We are looking forward to working with them on plans for future pieces.
By building a broader, longer-term agenda we can collectively help to deepen understanding of issues and provoke creative solutions.
Below are the original quick summary pieces by the micro-interns. If you would like to submit similar content please do get in touch.
COVID-19 and containerships: the last straw on the camel’s back: Every ‘innovation’ is fundamentally built up of components of history that, when put together, construct our future. One shipping challenge being faced today which global marine history could shed light on is the rising trend of transporting containers on the decks of bulk carrier vessels.
Self-driving cargo ships: will they be haunted by history? Using history to address a contemporary problem: how historical cases could be applied to tackling the issue of shipping lane crowding.
Avoiding supply-chain bottlenecks: what can history teach us? What can we learn from past experiences? Why has the backlog at sea become a pressing issue in recent years? And how can we amend past solutions in order to improve our own approach, and prevent failures from happening in the future?
Ports and their hinterlands, past and future: Port cities are dependent on trade and transport networks and therefore decisively affected by technological changes in this area. Explore these intrinsic connections, and what we can learn about the challenges of today, by exploring the transitions of the past.
Fire at Sea: Fires at sea have taken and continue to take many lives, cause great environmental damage and great cost to companies. A greater understanding of the history of fire safety could help us answer questions including what are the most effective ways of implementing fire safety recommendations?
The Experience of Containerisation: The successes, failures, foresight and folly of the past can teach us a great deal about how we should respond to the challenge of decarbonisation.
LNG Transitions a ‘Chicken and Egg’ Paradox: What can we learn from the literature on the transition to Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) propulsion, and how can we use these successes and failures in order to create a hard business case for decarbonisation?