Materials science: Share corrosion data : Nature News & Comment

" ... Open data infrastructures should be set up to house corrosion data in various countries, industries and applications. By using the same standardized formats for data and metadata, the data can be connected and eventually amount to a global system, possibly linked to the MGI. Governments should take the lead. For example, the Chinese government has invested nearly 200 million yuan (US$30 million) since 2006 on a platform for sharing corrosion data from 30 field-testing stations covering standard materials in environments (air, soil and water) typical of different parts of the country. Other nations, industries and interest groups should establish similar data infrastructures for corrosion in other regions and sectors. Efforts need to be coordinated to collect corrosion data that are relevant to urgent or emerging challenges, such as alternative energy and nanotechnology. For instance, the US Department of Energy has partnered with the MGI to build materials data repositories to help to speed up the development of alternative clean-energy sources.