Open Price Exploration for National security (OPEN)

Background
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting innovative approaches to address challenges in the technical areas of metals and rare earth minerals pricing, input costs to metals and rare earth minerals extraction and refining, supply and demand curve estimation and forecasting, quantitative industrial organization, game theory, and mechanism design, time series machine learning methods, and deployment of machine learning models. The proposed research should investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, economics, and/or systems. The critical material supply chain diversity is vital for the national security of the United States.

Work Details
The work involves developing algorithms that account for and quantify price, supply, and demand uncertainty in addition to generating accurate point estimates. The evaluation of algorithms will occur across multiple dimensions including historical evaluation (backtesting), continuous evaluation, and mark to baseline. The program schedule includes regular performer meetings, integration tests, and evaluation events. Phase 1 Base Deliverables include monthly status reports, prototype software deliverables, final base period report, and data rights acquisition plan. The program also includes Phase 1 Option 1 milestones such as program plan prototype software deliverable, final Phase 1 Option 1 report, and data rights acquisition plan.

Period of Performance
The period of performance for Phase 1 Base is monthly reports detailing technical status and progress during the reporting period against planned progress. Major releases are due 2, 3, 6, and 7 months after OT award; minor or patch releases are due weekly beginning 3 months after OT award. The Phase 1 Option 1 deliverables are due at least 15 days after the end of the period of performance.

Place of Performance
The place of performance for various events includes DARPA headquarters for PI meetings, MS Teams/telecon for monthly status updates, performer facility for site visits and integration tests, virtual location for evaluations.