IOTA (MIOTA) Joins Japanese National R&D Agency-Funded Blockchain Project
IOTA has joined industrial maintenance project funded by the Japanese National R&D agency.
Collaboration to Protect Critical Infrastructures in Japan and Abroad
In an announcement made today, the IOTA Foundation announced that it had partnered on a project initiated by Best Materia and IMC, Japan-based maintenance-related companies and funded by NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization).
For the uninitiated, NEDO is Japan’s largest public management organization focused on promoting research and development as well as the deployment of industrial, energy, and environmental technologies.
The official announcement states that the initiative would aim to implement artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed ledger technology – specifically, IOTA’s Tangle – to risk-based maintenance systems in industrial, power, petrochemicals, and oil refining plants. This would enable IOTA to capture a large share of the Japanese social infrastructure conservation market currently valued at approximately $1.5 trillion USD.
Notably, this type of predictive maintenance system that shares industry data using a distributed database is set to be the first of its kind in the world.
(Source: IOTA)
Commenting on the development, Holger Kother, Director of Partnerships, IOTA Foundation, noted:
“Creating a decentralized, open-source, and free distributed ledger technology to ensure data integrity has always been our driving purpose. As a non-profit, we are honored to see the IOTA protocol being utilized to secure a wide variety of data points in this project. Digitalizing the RBM systems for safer and more efficient industrial plants is only one of many applications where IOTA will be used in the future.”
Similar sentiments were echoed by Shigemitsu Kihara, CEO, Best Materia, who said:
“Because of the aging problem in Japan, we seriously need the AI system supporting our business in place of retired RBM consultants. We expect that IOTA tangle will enable us to securely collect and store RBM-related data including sensitive plant information which is the key to the accuracy of the AI system.”
About the Platform
Per sources close to the matter, the cloud-based SaaS software will essentially be a decentralized database using IOTA’s distributed ledger technology – the Tangle – which will safeguard it from the vulnerabilities facing centralized databases including accidents, tampering, and leakage.
Additionally, the platform will digitize the current data for plants stored across Japan in physical form. Digitization of data will make it easier for maintenance companies across the supply chain to collaborate and share data safely.
