Enhancing security of supply and resilience for maritime and rail transport

Why you should join this talk

The geopolitical situation in Europe and especially in the Northern and Eastern Baltic Sea region has become increasingly uncertain. Finland’s fate and success depend too much on the Baltic Sea as Finland’s foreign trade is nearly completely dependent on maritime transport, and there are hardly any alternative transport routes. The maritime operating environment is not stable; the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, the closure of the Saimaa Canal, cable breaks on the seabed, shadow fleets, GNSS interference and port strikes are examples of recent crises that have significant effects to the maritime security of supply.

Another challenge for Finland’s foreign trade is the lack of interoperability and direct rail connections with the European continent. This is why the Finnish government announced to consider changing its railway gauge to the European standard gauge of 1435 mm this year. This decision has also been taken in order to create redundancies in case there would be restrictions in the accessibility of Finland by sea.
On the European scale, innovation projects such as TRANSCEND are developing solutions to improve the protection and resilience of critical freight transport infrastructure networks across Europe against physical, cyber and hybrid threats.