50 Million Euro Research Program on Environmental Monitoring

The Finnish Strategic Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation for Energy and Environment, CLEEN Oy, launches an ambitious five year, 50 M€ research program on environmental monitoring and services. The program has been developed and is executed by a wide cross-functional consortium, including leading technology providers and research institutes. Vaisala is the largest industry contributor in the program.

The Measurement, Monitoring and Environmental Assessment (MMEA) program will create new tools, standards and methods for environmental measurement, monitoring and decision support. The program promotes new applications and services based on environmental data to improve the energy and material efficiency of infrastructures and industrial processes. It combines the development of new in-situ and remote sensing measurement technologies, data quality assurance methods, modeling and forecasting tools and information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure needed to create the integrated environmental observation networks and environmental decision support systems of the future.

An important part of the program is the MMEA Testbed, which will integrate data from several environmental measurement networks in a portal to be analyzed, modeled and used as raw material for the new environmental services. The MMEA Testbed will be developed in close co-operation with TIVIT Oy, the Strategic Centre for ICT in Finland.

The development and execution of the MMEA program is facilitated by CLEEN Oy. Its annual budget is 10 M€ with a total program volume of 50 M€. The program is jointly funded by the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation Tekes and the participating enterprises and research institutes.

The consortium is exceptionally large, consisting of 45 leading Finnish companies and research institutes in the area of environmental monitoring and services. Input from the Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) sector is significant: 18 of the 30 company members are SME’s, representing 50 percent of the whole industry contribution. The main research institutes include Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT), Finnish Meteorological Institute, Finnish Environment Institute, Centre for Metrology and Accreditation (MIKES), as well as several universities.