Smarctic - A roadmap to a smart Arctic specialisation

In this project, we have introduced a vision of the future and created a roadmap for maintaining and further developing Finnish arctic expertise. Around 4 million people live in the Arctic regions and the attractiveness of the region internationally has increased significantly in recent years. Behind this interest are drivers of global change such as climate change, energy demand, oil/raw material prices, tourism, new bio-economic structures, global transport, urbanisation, world population growth and development of technologies. Arctic regions are characterised by long distances, remoteness, isolation, sparse population and difficult climate conditions, as well as cultural diversity and traditional lifestyles. however, the Arctic region has to be a world leader in productivity in order to develop competitiveness successfully. this is also a prerequisite for securing human services in the area. product development requires the utilisation of the latest technology and novel innovations. Our vision is sustainable and smart economic activity, which safeguards the long-term welfare of societies and ecosystems in the Arctic region. The roadmap developed in this project has four layers, which describe the landscape drivers, operational environment, strategic challenges and paths for the implementation of the Finnish strategy for Arctic region. The four proposed strategy paths are: Spearhead strategy: Arctic marine technology and maritime transport - a focused strategy that emphasises traditional Finnish competences in ship building and maritime industry set in the Arctic context; Flying geese approach: emerging Arctic path ways - a widened strategy emphasising selected number of strong competence fields relating to the Arctic context; Culture of Arctic experimentation - a strategy emphasising principles of experimentation in innovation policy and in the field of Arctic competences; and Snowdrift strategy: fading Arctic business - the Arctic does not form a credible focus of activities and is forgotten or set as a subordinate perspective inside some other topic. Arctic business opportunities and potential can be identified in relation to the people who are living and working in, as well as visiting the Arctic regions. Such applications as "Winternet of things", self-monitoring devices, nordlab and e-hedalth would bring new users for solutions developed by companies. the future energy business will in great part be based on smart grid dedicated, ICt-based services. the integration of bioeconomy and metallurgical industries might bring interesting opportunities to increase material and energy efficiency.