According to Finnra's R&D strategy, the focal areas of research and development are:

1. Requirements of road users and other client groups
2. Impacts of road management and traffic
3. Asset management
4. Working markets for procurement of road works and services
5. Traffic management
6. Management of traffic and road network information.

As Finnra is responsible for the products and services of the public road sector, R&D also focuses on these activities.

Programming for 2002 was delayed by strategy development and organisation of actions and funding based on the strategy. The program was adopted by Finnra's Management Committee on May 20, 2002. After budget adjustments in the autumn, the funding was 5.16 million Euro. Out of this, 5.01 million was used, i.e. 97%. The regional road administrations used approximately 0.5 million in their own R&D projects. Finnra internal costs were estimated to be 3.8 million Euro. Project income was approx. 0.6 million Euro, mainly from EU funding.

One strategic project was finalised during the year: S4, the Road structures research program. S12, the Main road improvement solutions program, will end in 2003. The Management Committee decided 17.6 to start the strategic project S13, the Research programme for impact management, and 21.10 to start project S14, the Low-volume road economic maintenance programme. These projects are scheduled for 2002-2005.

New guidelines for initiatives and suggestions were adopted 4.10. The aim of the guidelines is to encourage new personnel initiatives. In 2002, 60 initiatives were made in the regional road administrations, 19 in the central administration.

For a very large part of the projects, implementation took until year's end, but in the main, the programmed projects were also realised. However, the priority proposal that was made in connection with the strategy decision has not been fully implemented. Two themes - client requirements and information management - are still at the planning stage. On the other hand, as the Management Committee adopted a program for the asset management theme on January 20, 2003, it increased the weight of this theme as compared to the priority proposal.

Project implementation was also slowed by changes in the R&D sector. An increasing number of projects is linked to National Technology Agency programs. Starting dates for these projects have been difficult to predict. For some projects, problems have been caused by a lack of experts and in some cases, complications have been caused by Finnra's own personnel situation.

Finnra's main R&D contractors are universities, also professional colleges, research centres and consultant companies. There are also individual researchers and co-operation projects with industrial contractors. In 2002, there were 290 research contracts and 75 contractors. The three main contractors had a 46% share of overall fund use. In the various themes and projects, the corresponding share was between 56% and 98%.

In international projects, countries mainly finance their national researchers. While 13 projects of the EU VIKING program accounted for 10% of fund use, only 0.5% of the funds were used by other than Finnish companies.

FINNRA R&D FINANCING IN 2002

CENTRAL ADMINISTRATION CONTRACTING (Million Euro)

In 1991-2002, Finnra has used an average of 10.5 Million Euro annually for research. Of this, 3.8 Million is internal costs, 1.2 Million regional administration contract costs and 7.3 Million central administration contract costs. Road Administration R&D funding has tended to decrease, both as a function of reduced public road budgets and as a result of changing organisation and strategy. As the Finnish Road Enterprise started in 2001, it took over a major part of product and technology development, then budgeted at some 3.5 Million Euro.