Who are we?
CATALIS is a clustering project co-funded by the European Union through Interreg Northern Peripheryand Arctic. We bring together seven research institutions from Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland to capitalise on years of Arctic infrastructure research and make it work in practice, across borders, for the people who build and maintain the region.
The challenge
Arctic and coastal infrastructure faces a unique combination of degradation mechanisms that makes durability exceptionally difficult to achieve. Repeated freeze-thaw cycles cause progressive internal cracking and surface scaling in concrete, a problem that is significantly harder to manage in low-carbon mixes where Portland cement is partially replaced by supplementary materials. Chloride ingress from sea spray accelerates reinforcement corrosion and weakens the concrete matrix over time. Ice loads and dynamic ice-structure interaction place substantial mechanical stress on offshore foundations, harbour structures, and coastal assets. On offshore wind turbines, ice accumulation on blades reduces aerodynamic performance and increases structural loading, while the combination of salt, moisture, and temperature cycling degrades unprotected steel and concrete surfaces rapidly. At the same time, the construction sector across the Northern Periphery and Arctic is under growing pressure to reduce its carbon footprint, replacing Portland cement, extending service life, and reducing maintenance burdens. Balancing these sustainability demands with the extreme durability requirements of Arctic environments is the central technical challenge.
Where concrete meets ice
The knowledge to address these challenges exists. Researchers across the Northern Periphery and Arctic have spent years developing and testing solution: ow-carbon concrete mixes that withstand freeze-thaw cycles, coatings that resist icing and corrosion, testing methods validated under real Arctic conditions, and models that predict how structures behave under ice loads. This knowledge is distributed across institutions in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands developed through field work, laboratory testing, and cross-border collaboration. The challenge is not a lack of solutions. It is making sure those solutions reach the engineers, planners, and authorities who can put them to work. CATALIS works across three interconnected work packages,each with a clear focus, a designated lead, and a set of activities that together move Arctic infrastructure knowledge from research into practice.
Work packages and activites
WP1 — Lessons Learned & Next Steps
WP1 is about making sense of what Ar2CorD and OFFwind produced: comparing findings, identifying what is transferable, and packaging it in a way that practitioners and authorities can actually use. Partners contribute their knowledge through shared templates and comparison tables.
WP2 — Micro-Pilot & Multi-Site Feasibility Scan
WP2 takes the knowledge out of documents and into the real world. UiT deploys an observational exposure set-up at the Narvik harbour field station (created during Ar2CorD project) placing Ar2CorD concrete mixes with anticing OFFwind coatings under real conditions. The pilot is deliberately simple and low-cost, designed as a replicable model that any partner region can adapt. In parallel the partnership screens potential future pilot locations across the region to identify where the next steps could happen.
WP3 — Transfer, Outreach & Continuation
WP3 ensures that what CATALIS produces does not stop when the project ends. UFI establishes the Transnational Arctic Durability Network, a platform connecting researchers, practitioners, and authorities across the NPA region. Partners conduct stakeholder interviews in their own regions, gathering insights on how results can be used in practice and policy. A joint roadmap is created and the project closes with a hybrid public event, open to the wider stakeholder community.
The research behind CATALIS
CATALIS is built on the results of two Interreg projects that investigated complementary aspects of Arctic infrastructure durability, one at the material level, focusing on low-carbon concrete mix design and freeze-thaw resistance, the other at the surface and structural level, addressing protective coatings, ice-structure interaction, and foundation performance in marine environments. Together they form the validated technical foundation that CATALIS synthesises and transfers into practice. Learn more about the two Interreg projects that Catalis builds on and the results that informed our work.
Ar2CorD was an Interreg Northern Periphery & Arctic project that tackled one of the biggest sustainability challenges in Arctic construction, making low-carbon concrete durable enough for extreme freeze-thaw conditions. The project developed concrete mix designs using supplementary cementitious materials, replacing at least 30% of Portland cement, and tested their performance through both accelerated lab testing and real-world exposure. A long-term durability monitoring station was established at Narvik harbour, one of the few of its kind in the region, providing ongoing field data under genuine Arctic conditions. The project involved partners from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Greenland, and Iceland.
OFFwind was an Interreg Aurora project that addressed the Arctic obstacles to offshore wind development in the Gulf of Bothnia and the Norwegian Sea: icing on turbine blades, ice loads on structures, and corrosion of foundations. The project developed icephobic and anti-corrosion coating technologies, advanced ice-structure interaction modelling, and explored the use of low-carbon cementitious materials for offshore foundations. Partners from Norway, Sweden, and Finland contributed expertise in atmospheric science, concrete technology, modelling, and coating technologies. OFFwind's results are directly relevant to the rapidly growing offshore wind sector across the Northern Periphery and Arctic.