The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, in partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey, has unveiled a new program to enhance supply chain resilience and national security by increasing transparency in the global critical materials market.
The Open Price Exploration for National Security program aims to develop technology that will serve as a transparent information source for critical materials producers and buyers, DARPA said Wednesday.
OPEN will analyze publicly available information on fundamental and observable input costs to formulate structural price predictions and create supply and demand forecasts using advances in machine learning, time series forecasting and economic modeling.
USGS will provide subject matter expertise in critical mineral extraction and refining to support the OPEN technology development effort.
The program will focus on two technical areas: TA-1 for estimating actual critical material input costs and TA-2 for forecasting supply and demand functions for essential materials.
DARPA will host a proposers day on Nov. 13 to provide details on OPEN’s objectives.