Annual Report Stories 2017

Located well over 4 km above sea level, Daocheng Yading Airport in China constitutes the highest civil airport in the world. With Vaisala’s high-quality equipment, Daocheng Yading manages to measure the weather conditions despite the challenges posed by its altitude and low temperatures.

The Atlantic hurricane season of 2017 was very active, including a high number of major storms. The better hurricanes can be forecast, the easier it is to mitigate their impact. Vaisala’s Global Lightning Dataset GLD360 may provide an effective tool for predicting the evolution of these systems.

Global mobility for people means mobility for pathogens, too. Vaisala provides a solution to ensuring vaporized hydrogen peroxide concentration is high enough in bio-decontamination processes.

In 2017, 119,053 people in the United States were awaiting organ donation. Each donated organ can change someone’s life, but it is running the risk of becoming ruined, if a simple freezer fails. Reliable temperature monitoring and alarms can save thousands of invaluable organs.

The lethal problem of poor air quality needs to be addressed, but solutions to the problem are impossible to develop without comprehensive and accurate data. Vaisala and its partners are building a new network in Nanjing, aiming for a completely new observation concept.

Sourcing Academy is a training program for Sourcing employees, aimed to provide them with opportunities for development and create versatile competencies to help the team reach its strategic targets. The focus is on long-term development and to step-up the team’s capabilities to respond to the requirements of their new roles.

Following the organizational realignment to regions and a sharper focus on development in the Weather and Environment business area, we started VESPA, the Vaisala Environmental Sales Professionals Academy or sales competence development program, in the spring of 2017.

In 2017, the Operations unit undertook a major effort to promote the importance of standard ways of working and culture of continuous improvement. These themes are based on Lean leadership and are a part of Operations strategy.

Announced the winners of its first ever Supplier of the Year awards in six different categories.

Vaisala, together with Technical Research Centre of Finland VTT Ltd and their European partners, is developing revolutionary LED-based technology for gas sensing, MIREGAS – Mid-IR Source for Gas Sensing.

Vaisala partners with Heureka Science Centre  in Finland to increase awareness of atmospheric sciences and their importance among the Centre’s visitors. This is one way for Vaisala to promote innovation and encourage the young and old alike to take an interest in science.

Vaisala is the honorary in-kind donator for the New Children’s Hospital being built in Helsinki. The construction commenced already in 2014, and the opening of the hospital will take place in 2018. Vaisala is contributing humidity, temperature, and carbon dioxide measurement instruments to the hospital.

In 2017, over the course of a month, both the United States and Caribbean nations were affected by no less than four major hurricanes with wind speeds exceeding 111 mph (180 km/h). Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Jose, and Maria caused widespread devastation over many countries.

Vaisala participates in the TechLand exhibition in the Museum of Technology in Helsinki, Finland. The exhibition is organized as a unique collaboration with Finnish technological companies.

Vaisala is part of an expert organizations’ joint project, Helsinki Metropolitan Air Quality Testbed (HAQT), which aims to offer local air quality data for the Helsinki Metropolitan area. The data will be used to accelerate new innovations, develop new services and improve decision making to enhance air quality and the quality of life. Targeting high, and who knows, perhaps the urban air quality know-how will be the next big export item for Finland?