Spreading the word on ballast water management

A new online learning portal including a free e-learning course on the Operational Aspects of Ballast Water Management (BWM) was launched by the GEF-UNDP-IMO GloBallast Partnerships Programme and the Global Industry Alliance (GIA).
The online tools have been developed by the GloBallast project, with financial support from the GIA
to assist with the wider implementation of the International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships' Ballast Water and Sediments, 2004 (BWM Convention).
The learning portal is accessible free of charge through registering at http://globallastlearning.com/login/index.php. The portal gives access to an online Resource Library and to the e-learning course. It will also have the facility to host free webinars related to BWM in the near future.

The e-learning course on Operational Aspects of BWM is based on the GloBallast Advanced Training Course on Operational Aspects of BWM (developed with financial support from the GIA and the IMO Integrated Technical Cooperation Programme (ITCP)), and is aimed at all stakeholders who will have to deal with operational aspects of ballast water management, such as Port State Control Officers (PSCOs), but also seafarers, and all crew on board a ship.

The course contains four modules; Introduction, Operational Aspects, Survey and Certification, and Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement (CME). In each module, the user will explore the issue in the context of the objective of the module, discover key facts to build on the users existing knowledge on BWM and finally use carefully designed hypothetical scenarios to put this new knowledge into practice.

The learning portal also offers the opportunity to download the e-learning course for free so the user could use it offline at a later stage: a very useful option for seafarers  who may not always have internet access on board ships.

The GIA is the unique public-private sector partnership developed by the GloBallast Project with the shipping and the shipbuilding industries to assist in identifying solutions to address some of the common challenges faced by the industry, including technological training and capacity-building challenges. More information can be found at http://globallast.imo.org/the-gia/ .