New Scientific Publication: Port City Regions in Transition — Skills, Inclusion, and Innovative VET Pathways for the Twin Transformation
We are proud to share that a new peer-reviewed article co-authored by members of the PortAbility team has been published in Sustainability, one of the leading international scientific journals in the field of sustainabledevelopment. Published by MDPI — a globally recognised open-access publisher indexed in both Web of Science and Scopus — Sustainability brings together interdisciplinary research from across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, and holds a CiteScore of 5 and an h-index of 207. Having our work featured in this journal is a strong signal of the academic rigour and relevance of the PortAbility project, and it reflects the qualityof the research being conducted by our consortium.
The article, titled “Port City Regions in Transition: Skills, Inclusion, and Innovative VET Pathways for the Twin Transformation”, offers a comprehensive integrative literature review that examines how port city regions (PCRs) across Europe are navigating the twin green and digital transition — and what this means for workers, training systems, and communities.
The authors synthesise five interconnected areas of scholarship: the spatial and institutional transformation of port city regions; skills foresight and future competences; challenges and reforms in vocational education and training (VET); social inclusion and equity; and innovative VET methodologies in port-adjacent sectors.
Key findings and takeaways
One of the central arguments of the article is that the transition happening in port cities is not merely a technical challenge — it is a deeply socio-institutional one. Technologies such as Onshore Power Supply (OPS) systems, alternative fuels, and digital logistics platforms are rapidly changing how ports operate. But the success of these innovations depends fundamentally on the adaptive capacity of workers, the quality of training systems, and effective governance.
The article highlights several important findings:
- Regarding skills foresight, the research draws on major forecasting exercises — from the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 to CEDEFOP’s Skills Forecast — to show that between 60 and 375 millionworkers globally may need to transition to new occupational categories by 2030. For port city regions, this translates into urgent demand for transversal competences such as digital literacy, adaptability, systems thinking, and intercultural collaboration.
- On VET challenges, the article identifies a widespread “sustainability literacy gap” in maritime training. Traditional maritime education still focuses predominantly on technical competences such as navigation and cargo operations, while often neglecting broader sustainability competences — including green technology integration, regulatory compliance, and environmentally responsible decision-making.
- In terms of social inclusion, the findings are equally compelling. In Greece, the NEET rate (young people not in employment, education, or training) stood at 19.7% in 2022 — nearly double the EU average. Women remainsignificantly underrepresented in STEM-oriented VET pathways. Migrants and refugees face compounding barriers including language gaps and slow recognition of prior qualifications. The article argues that withoutdeliberately inclusive training policies, the twin transition risks deepening existing inequalities rather than reducing them.
Finally, the article examines innovative VET methodologies that are proving effective in port-adjacent sectors: work-based and dual learning models, micro-credentials and stackable qualifications aligned with the Europass framework, immersive technologies such as VR/AR simulators and digital twins, and living lab environments that bring together education, industry, public institutions, and civil society through what the authors callquadruple helix collaboration.
The article concludes with a clear call to action: the resilience and competitiveness of port city regions depends on investing in people — not just infrastructure. Inclusive, quality-assured VET systems, anchored in EU frameworks and aligned with international maritime standards, are essential to closing critical skills gaps while ensuring that no worker is left behind in the transition.
This research directly underpins the work being carried out within the PortAbility project, which is funded by the European Union under the Erasmus+ Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVE) initiative. It reinforces ourcommitment to developing innovative, standards-aligned, and socially inclusive VET pathways for port city economies across the East Mediterranean and beyond.
📄 Read the full article here: https://doi.org/10.3390/su18052538
