Data Management in Nanomaterial Safety
Summary
Effective data management is central to assessing and mitigating the risks posed by engineered nanomaterials. As the volume and complexity of nanosafety data expand, structured approaches to data collection, curation, storage and sharing become essential to support reliable hazard assessment, regulatory compliance and innovation in safe‐by‐design strategies. Core challenges include ensuring consistency in physico-chemical characterisation, capturing detailed exposure and biological effect metadata, and harmonising terminology across diverse data sources. Emphasis on the FAIR principles has driven the development of interoperable databases, standardised metadata schemas and unique identifiers, which collectively enable seamless data integration for computational modelling and decision making. Emerging workflows leverage modular metadata tables and semantic frameworks to improve reproducibility and facilitate machine-readable data exchange. By bridging experimental studies, in silico modelling and regulatory frameworks, robust data management underpins global efforts to predict nanomaterial behaviour, safeguard human health and accelerate responsible nanotechnology development.
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Technical terms
FAIR principles: A set of guidelines to make research data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.
Metadata: Descriptive information that provides context, provenance and structure for research data.
Ontology: A formal framework that defines and relates concepts within a domain to ensure semantic consistency.
Minimum Information Table (MIT): A modular schema specifying the essential metadata fields required for reporting nanosafety experiments.
Global identifier: A unique code assigned to each nanomaterial to enable unambiguous referencing across datasets and publications.
References
- Metadata Stewardship in Nanosafety Research: Community-Driven Organisation of Metadata Schemas to Support FAIR Nanoscience Data. Nanomaterials (2020).
- European Registry of Materials: global, unique identifiers for (undisclosed) nanomaterials. Journal of Cheminformatics (2022).
- Digital research data: from analysis of existing standards to a scientific foundation for a modular metadata schema in nanosafety. Particle and Fibre Toxicology (2022).
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