Digitalisation & Interoperability

Digitalisation refers to the process of making use of digitised information (i.e., data in a digital form) to formulate and to create new knowledge enabling the extraction of insight out of such digital data. Interoperability is key to making digitalisation work in practice.

We define interoperability as the ability of two or more systems to exchange information through a common representational system to perform complex tasks that cannot be done by each single system alone.

In the context of materials science, digitalisation and interoperability encompass aspects of representing, managing, accessing and utilising digital information about products, components, materials, their behaviour and their processing to gain knowledge and insight about the intricate structure-processing-form-properties relations along the entire value chains and life cycles of the material or a component and across multiple granularity levels.

Digitalisation rests on the ability to integrate all aspects of materials development including Data-Based and Physics-Based Modelling, Characterisation and post and pre-processing to enable digitisation along the entire value chain. Moreover, digitalisation requires the integration of other tangible components including data and knowledge bases. Such an integration demands in turn FAIR data and strong interoperability foundations based on ontologies as well as facilitating tools and platforms such as digital marketplaces and Open Simulation Platforms.

The overarching goal of this Focus Area is to create a vibrant digital materials development eco-system in Europe that encompasses all the above activities.