FIRE Receives Research Infrastructure Funding to Restore Finland’s Leadership in Register-Based Research

The Finnish Infrastructure for Register-Based Research (FIRE), coordinated by the INVEST Research Flagship Centre, received the national infrastructure roadmap status. According to Professor Jani Erola, who leads the FIRE project, the funding enables the creation of a world-class infrastructure for register-based data research.

FIRE is a remote access, application service, and training infrastructure for conducting register-based research in Finland. With FIRE the goal is to restore Finland’s register-based research to the forefront of the international stage.

“FIRE will be built on Statistics Finland’s FIONA remote access system. Statistics Finland has done an excellent job, but it has lacked the resources to develop FIONA further alone. At the same time, the number of users has grown from a few hundred to a thousand. Now we can develop the system together in a researcher-community-driven way,” Jani Erola, director of the FIRE-coordinating INVEST Research Flagship Centre, describes the importance of FIRE funding.

According to Erola, one of the international strengths of Finnish social science research has been its capability and expertise in register-based research. FIRE aims to become a computing environment and a register data catalogue that is world-leading in its technical quality, usability, and ability to foster breakthrough research.

FIRE will implement language-model-based artificial intelligence, and provide harmonized and preassembled register data modules available for all researchers lowering the threshold for conducting register-based research. As part of the project, FIRE will also train future generations of register data specialists in research and evidence-based decision-making.

“National and regional governments and wellbeing services counties want to use knowledge management, and make decisions based on data, but having data alone is not enough — you have to know how to use the data effectively. FIRE will train register data specialists,” says Erola.

The newly granted funding runs through 2028, but the development of infrastructures like FIRE is an ongoing process. New features will be introduced along the way. According to Erola, the project will have a quick start, thanks to the numerous researchers involved who have experience using both FIONA and international infrastructures and have experience with what works well and what doesn’t.

The infrastructure is coordinated by INVEST at the University of Turku. The consortium also includes Statistics Finland, Aalto University, Tampere University, the University of Eastern Finland, the University of Helsinki, the University of Jyväskylä, and the VATT Institute for Economic Research.

The roadmap for Finnish research infrastructures is a tool for the research community, policymakers, and funders to guide investment and support research, development, and innovation. The aim of the roadmap is to ensure that research infrastructures remain internationally competitive, are able to respond to both current and future scientific challenges, generate new knowledge and expertise, and interact with RDI actors.

The projects included in the roadmap were selected by the Research Council of Finland. For the 2025–2028 roadmap, 21 research infrastructures were chosen, a total of 130 million euros in funding. Some of the selected research infrastructures received their funding decisions in December, while the remaining infrastructures will receive theirs at the end of January 2025.