The initiative aims to study new infrastructures and methodologies for big data research in order to greatly facilitate the tools and techniques for acquiring knowledge and insights from big data, while improving the ability to use big data for scientific discovery. It specifically is intended to develop core technologies to collect, store, manage, analyze and share large-scale data, and use these technologies to accelerate the pace of discovery in science and engineering, strengthen national security, completely change the education and learning mode, and vigorously cultivate new talents for developing and using big data technologies.