The eNanoMapper project has the potential to have significant positive impact on the nanotechnology industry, regulators and citizens in the European Union and markedly strengthen the cohesive growth, influence and outreach of European nanosafety and research-driven industrial nanotech-based innovation within a global perspective.
Our eNanoMapper data warehouse and ontology platform can be used to capture data and knowledge along the full lifecycle of ENMs, from research to product development to manufacturing procedures, human and environmental exposures, (eco)toxicological effects and degradation processes. Its flexible design will support the safety, environmental, regulation, and standardisation aspects of ENMs, which are all important for safety-by-design and risk assessment.
Our linked data approach will support real, achievable and operational interoperability with external ontologies and databases and enable the application of statistical and data mining procedures for data analysis, as well as to support the information transfer activities of the NanoSafety cluster. Thus, these deliverables of eNanoMapper will be directly applicable to exploit and couple together the many diverse data types of both past and current nanosafety research projects.
In particular the eNanoMapper platform will consist of:
| • | an ontology addressing all standardisation and regulatory requirements; |
| • | a data warehouse to share data and accelerate knowledge flow along the full nanomaterial research and production chain in a secure way (supported by authorization and authentication on all resources); |
| • | human and machine interfaces for the data warehouse; |
| • | data analysis platforms supporting toxicological and environmental risk assessment, safety-by-design principles and experimental design; |
| • | guidelines for experimental design capturing statistical evidence and community-selected standards; |
| • | ISA-Tab templates to capture experimental data using spreadsheets. |
These results will have the following impact on the European nanosafety community:
| • | the open, community-agreed language formalized in an ontology will enable comparing and combining private and public data and knowledge; |
| • | there will be an open platform for integrating ENM data sources to provides uniform access to Open and confidential data; |
| • | the platform will support the exploration and highlighting of patterns in ENM structure-activity relations at a US-EU community scale; |
| • | the platform will simplify entering data, reducing the cost of safety studies and comparisons; |
| • | the European publishing industry will be provided with clear reporting requirements and usable and well-supported tools, allowing their authors to make their data available to the eNanoMapper platform. |