Resilient and Smart Maintenance and Trafficability of Gravel and Forest Roads

The RELA project addresses a critical challenge for Finland’s bioeconomy and national security of supply: the unmanaged deterioration of the over 350,000-kilometre gravel and forest road network, which causes tens of millions of euros in additional annual costs. Since the total length of the Finnish road network is 454,000 kilometres, we are talking about a significant portion of the road network that is impossible to keep in good condition such that problems do not occur on the road network during the most difficult weather conditions. The forest road network is the second largest road network after Finnish public roads and a critical part of the country’s logistics.

RELA brings a fundamental solution to this: we are shifting road maintenance from reactive (fixing when broken) to proactive and data-driven operations. The project creates globally novel tools by combining laser scanning, deep-learning AI, and multi-disciplinary data (weather, raw material procurement, transport). We are developing objective methods to identify the condition of the future road surface and subgrade and establishing dynamic prediction models for future condition and bearing capacity. We are also developing easily transferable mobile laser scanning that can be moved from one vehicle to another, thus lowering measurement costs.

The concrete benefits include a lower carbon footprint (logistics optimization reduces fuel consumption and CO2 emissions), cost-effectiveness (road managers save money by precisely targeting maintenance measures), stronger security of supply (improved year-round trafficability guarantees the delivery of critical raw materials even during emergency and thaw conditions), and export potential (the created AI algorithms will be integrated into the software of internationally known SMEs, creating new export business for Finland).

The RELA project is the digital foundation for a sustainable and resilient Arctic road infrastructure.