by Michael Schwartz
This paper covers the progress of the MII (Measurement Information Infrastructure) effort to create a standard for expressing a calibration laboratory capabilities, ISO/IEC 17025 Scope of Accreditation (SoA) in a XML formatted dataset. Once established, the metrology community can move from manually verifying uncertainties to a more automatable approach. This XML file can then be used to generate a traditional SoA document. As a result of these efforts, the members of the MII working group have released several tools and software to the community under open source licenses. These tools can be used for tasks such as verifying final uncertainties on a calibration test report to comply with a SoA.
Over the past three years, the MII working group has refined a SoA data schema and developed a number of supporting products including: a standard measurement-quantities-and-unit-of-measure database; an open-source, unit-of-measure management and conversion tools; an open-source high precision formula interpreter; and an open-source, SoA data access object library. We are currently working on user friendly data editors and online SoA search tools. Now, we need help from the community to create a self-enforcing standard for terms, taxonomies, and encapsulating knowledge to be used throughout MII. Read the full article (PDF)
