The mission of Research Centre Terra is to produce new research-based knowledge for the benefit of Finnish society enabling safe construction and utilisation as well as lifecycle-efficient maintenance of different types of infrastructures belonging to the built environment. These infrastructures include e.g. roads, railways, environmental structures, structures of sports and recreational areas, yards and foundation engineering structures.
Research focus and goals
The most important ways to implement research results are under-graduate, post-graduate and continuation education, international and domestic publishing, and diverse influence on the norms and guidelines applied in the group's operating area.
The main goals of Research Centre Terra are:
- Produce new, research-based material and structural solutions, as well as design and repair methods that enable the adoption of more lifecycle-efficient practices in infrastructure construction and maintenance
- Promote digitalisation in the entire life-cycle of road and rail infrastructures and to increase productivity of the infra sector by utilising digitalisation in co-operation with many stakeholders
- Train new diploma engineers and PhDs with up-to-date skills for the various tasks in the field of infrastructure engineering
- Together with our partners, we conduct wide-ranging development of the field of infrastructure engineering by participating in the preparation of national and EU-level guidelines and norms, and by influencing professional organizations and committees in the field.
The research centre is divided into four functionally overlapping subgroups: TerraGeo, TerraRoad, TerraRail and TerraDigi. Research is characterized by:
- Analytical and numerical analysis of the performance of infrastructures
- Verification of analysis results by monitoring measurements of full-scale structures
- Deriving input data for the analyses based on versatile laboratory and field measurement capabilities used by the research team
- Conducting research projects in close collaboration with research stakeholders - industry, infrastructure owners and authorities
- Reporting of key research results in Finnish and English
