The Finnish Freshwater Competence Centre to boost science, education and business with key technologies
The main goal of the Freshwater Competence Centre is promoting the research infrastructure, equipment and the outstanding Finnish freshwater competence and knowledge both domestically and internationally, in order to make wide-reaching science with concrete impact.
Freshwater Competence Centre consists of Finnish universities and governmental research institutes: University of Turku, University of Oulu, Aalto university, Finnish Environment Institute and Finnish Geospatial Research Institute. Currently, there are also 15 business organisations involved.
Each one of these organizations has their own specific field of expertise within freshwater. The previous successful collaborations encouraged these organizations to finally start the Freshwater Competence Centre, to try and solve great challenges related to our valuable freshwater resources.
"Each one of these organisations has their own specific field of expertise within the research area of freshwater. The previous successful collaborations encouraged these organisations to finally start the Freshwater Competence Centre, to try and solve great challenges related to our valuable freshwater resources", says the leader of the Centre Petteri Alho from the University of Turku. The Freshwater Competence Centre is funded by the Academy of Finland via multiple Academy projects.
In the new centre, the University of Oulu will focus on water research in the northern regions and develop new measurement and modelling methods. "We will study what happens to water in the river basins in terms of quality and quantity. Combining different measurement methods, new measurement technologies and numerical modelling will enable us to understand water and nutrient cycles in a comprehensive way and to predict the effects of climate change and human activities," says Hannu Marttila, Associate Professor at the University of Oulu.
The researchers aim to create a digital twin of river basins, in particular, three supersites: Oulanka River, Tana river and River Vantaanjoki to develop next generation modeling research for fluvial environments in the context of water amount and quality. The new centre will also obtain and build a research infrastructure of sensors and models for freshwater research.