DICE Materials Data Platform with Greatly Improved Data Collection and Accumulation Capabilities
—Leveraging Cloud Resources to Promote More Efficient Data Utilization and Sharing—
National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS)
NIMS has been developing the DICE materials data platform to fulfill its role as a data core center in the MEXT-led project to develop materials DX platforms across Japan. As part of this effort, NIMS has significantly improved the data collection and accumulation capabilities of DICE by transferring its system infrastructure to the public cloud and adding the Data Storage and Sharing Services (RDE) system to it.
Abstract
- The National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) has been developing the DICE materials data platform to fulfill its role as a data core center in the MEXT-led project to develop materials DX platforms across Japan. As part of this effort, NIMS has significantly improved the data collection and accumulation capabilities of DICE by transferring its system infrastructure to the public cloud and adding the Data Storage and Sharing Services (RDE) system to it. These modifications have enabled DICE to automatically process research data collected from across the nation into formats ready for data-driven research. In addition, NIMS has greatly enhanced the user friendliness of the MatNavi materials database—a DICE component. NIMS will continue to upgrade its DICE services with the aim of significantly boosting data-driven materials research in Japan.
- NIMS serves as a core data center in the project to develop materials DX platforms across Japan led by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). In this role, NIMS has been committed to strategically collecting and accumulating high-quality data generated by the industrial and academic sectors and making it available for use by scientists. The DICE materials data platform plays a pivotal role in achieving this purpose. DICE is a comprehensive system capable of collecting and compiling data and making it available for use by researchers. Its services—including the Materials Database (MatNavi) and the Materials Data Repository (MDR)—are publicly available.
- NIMS recently integrated the RDE system it developed into DICE to enable it to speedily register experimental research data online. Registered data is then automatically subjected to a series of processes, making it suitable for data-driven materials research. The compiled data is then available not only for individual use but also for shared use between different individuals, groups and organizations engaged in the same research projects. The use of DICE is therefore expected to promote digital transformation in materials R&D. Moreover, DICE may potentially enable secure confidential data sharing by larger groups of materials researchers across wider areas
- NIMS will continue developing materials DX platforms in coordination with the ARIM Japan (Advanced Research Infrastructure for Materials and Nanotechnology in Japan) program and the DxMT (R&D Projects for Materials-Data Creation & Utilization) project.
Figure. Flow of data registration, data structuring, and data utilization in RDE
