Opening of Maritime Faculty in Split’s 10th International Maritime Science Conference took place on Monday, May 8, at the "President" hotel in Solin.

The IMSC conference has for many years cooperated with the Polish Naval Academy (Gdynia), Faculty of Maritime Affairs and Transport (Portorož, Slovenia), Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Nikola Vaptsarov Academy from (Varna, Bulgaria), Croatian Hydrographic Institute (Split), International Hydrographic organization (IHO), Nikola Tesla Polytechnic (Gospić), that also co-organized it. In addition to them, this year’s organization was supported by the Split-Dalmatia County.

- At this year's conference, there are more than 180 participants with about 170 papers divided into sections. Following the situation with COVID-19 pandemic, it became a problem to transport cargo from Far East to Europe and Western countries, many ships were being demolished, new builts were commissioned and a new problem arose - reducing costs. Today, we are moving towards reducing manpower on ships, towards autonomous ships, or reducing number of crew members. Next, we strive for green technologies, so we build ships powered by hydrogen, electricity, ammonia... We are also moving towards smart ports, where cargo will be unloaded with as little human support as possible - prof. Pero Vidan Ph.D., Maritime Faculty’s dean, asserted opening the conference.

On behalf of University of Split’s Rector, prof. Dragan Ljutić Ph.D., and himself, prof. Igor Jerković Ph.D., vice-rector for science and quality, greeted all guests and said that the University also deals with these topics in cooperation with SEA-EU Alliance universities, that is, their cities and ports.

The conference also hosted a round table addressing city of Split’s transport network, according to European transport corridors, by connecting the port by road and railway.

- It is the panel on "Competitiveness and perspectives of Split’s transport", which will highlight the issues of Split’s transport network – assist. prof. Luka Vukić Ph.D., who will moderate the round table, explained.

Conference participants are scientists from Croatia and the world (France, Poland, USA, Qatar, Sweden, Finland, UK, Spain, Philippines, Slovenia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, etc.).