Dear Reader,

Welcome to the eighth KCDB Newsletter.

 Panama's experience presenting QS and submitting CMCs by Dr Hernando J. Florez, Director of Centro Nacional de Metrología de Panamá, CENAMEP.

New signatories of the CIPM MRA

Four of the new Associates of the CGPM signed the CIPM MRA on 14 November 2007:
- The FYR Macedonia, Associate since 10 October 2006, signed by Mrs S. Mirakovska, Director, Bureau of Metrology, BOM;
- Moldova, Associate since 1 January 2007, signed by M S. Baban, General Director, National Institute of Standardization and Metrology, INSM;
- Sri Lanka, Associate since 3 August 2007, signed by M K.A. Gunasoma, Director, Measurement Units, Standards and Services Department, MUSSD;
- Tunisia, Associate since 23 October 2007, signed by Dr S. Ghedamsi, General Director, Laboratoire Central d'Analyses et d'Essais, LCAE.

Tunisia became an Associate of the CGPM on 23 October 2007.
Dr Saloua Ghedamsi, General Director of the Laboratoire Central d'Analyses et d'Essais, LCAE, of Tunisia signed the CIPM MRA on 14 November 2007.

Consequently, the CIPM MRA has now been signed by representatives of institutes from 45 Member States, 24 Associates of the CGPM, and two international organizations, and also covers about 120 institutes designated by the signatory or other appropriate official bodies as holders of specific national standards.

Impact of the new search facility on the visits to the KCDB website

The total number of monthly external connections to the KCDB website has increased from 10 300 to more than 30 000 between August 2006 and October 2007. Details on the number of visits are given for the two main parts of the website (key and supplementary comparisons, and CMCs) in the Figure below, giving evidence of the impact of the new search facility implemented in March 2007 (see KCDB Newsletter No 7).

Number of visits to the KCDB website

As already noticed, the database collecting information on key and supplementary comparisons is basically made "by the NMIs for the NMIs". In March 2007, it seemed that we had attracted this audience with a number of visits remaining stable for more than one year. Since the new search engine has been implemented, the number of visits has increased, and we observed that reports of comparisons are increasingly consulted.
The number of visits to information on CMCs has also continuously increased since the creation of the KCDB. It reached an average level of one visit every three minutes in the period August - October 2007, about 35 % of which correspond to requests entered in the free-text box of the new search engine.
We have good feedback that the KCDB website attracts the attention of regulators, accreditors, and commercial and industrial companies.

Key and supplementary comparisons

The key and supplementary comparisons database now covers 598 key comparisons (78 from the BIPM, 302 from the CCs, and 218 from RMOs) and 166 supplementary comparisons.

Number of key comparisons (in blue) and of supplementary comparisons (in pink) registered in the KCDB: evolution over the last four years

One observes that the rate of new comparisons registered in the KCDB remains stable at a level of about 40 new key comparisons and about 20 new supplementary comparisons over a mean period of one year.

Number of new key comparisons (in dark blue) and of new supplementary comparisons
(in red) registered in the KCDB over the one-year interval ending by the dates given on the x-axis

Among the 598 key comparisons that are registered:
-89 correspond to exercises prior to the implementation of the CIPM MRA, and will never have results published in the KCDB (they were "Approved for provisional equivalence"), and
-280 have their Final Reports approved and posted in the KCDB, providing a total of about 800 graphs of equivalence displayed in the KCDB.

The results of 67 RMO key comparisons (against 57 at the time of the KCDB Newsletter No 7) - 24 conducted by APMP, 4 by COOMET, 36 by EUROMET, and 3 by SIM - are published in the KCDB. Linkage has also been carried out for 11 bilateral key comparisons subsequent to full-scale CC key comparisons; their results are added on the appropriate graphs of equivalence (see the example of 10 V Zener diodes: six comparisons linked together). In addition, BIPM key comparison results are regularly updated, as well as those of the key comparison on the computation of Coordinated Universal Time UTC, CCTF-K001.UTC.

The first key and supplementary comparisons conducted under the auspices of the new European legal entity EURAMET are now registered in the KCDB: EURAMET.PR-K1.a.1 and EURAMET.EM-S29.

  Latest KC results published

  Participation in key and supplementary comparisons (as on 3 December 2007)

Calibration and Measurement Capabilities (CMCs)

On 3 December 2007, some 20 000 CMCs were published in the KCDB. The exact numbers are as follows:
-12 539 in General Physics,
-3 463 in Ionizing Radiation, and
-3 995 in Chemistry.
The detailed distribution of the number of CMCs published by metrology area and by country is given here.

Number of CMCs recorded registered in the KCDB:
evolution over the last five and a half years.

 Latest CMCs published

Deletion and re-instatement of CMCs on their compliance with an approved QS

The detailed situation regarding deletion and re-instatement of CMCs linked to approved Quality Systems (QS) was given in the KCDB Newsletter No 6 at the date December 2006. Since then, CMCs from LATU (Uruguay) in Mass and Related Quantities, and in Thermometry, were greyed-out from the KCDB. Some other CMCs were re-instated, among which a number of CMCs in Chemistry declared by Canada, all CMCs from Ukraine and Russia that had been deleted in November 2006, and a number of CMCs in Electricity declared by India.

The present situation of deletion/re-instatement is given in page 5 of the statistics file available from the KCDB website. In summary, a total of about one thousand CMCs were deleted from the KCDB between July 2005 and November 2006 because they were not covered by an appropriate QS. This procedure is now ended, and already 600 of them have been re-instated. From now on, all new entries will necessarily satisfy the QS conditions, leading to full confidence in the international recognition of calibration and measurement certificates corresponding to Appendix C entries.

Feedback from the 19th JCRB meeting

The 19th meeting of the JCRB was hosted by the NRC-INMS in Ottawa (Canada) on 27-28 September 2007. As a consequence of the meeting, the JCRB recommended to the CIPM the adoption of the new CMC definition with its accompanying notes, which was later accepted by the CIPM during its November 2007 meeting. In addition, the JCRB recommended the adoption of a new policy on the reporting of the implications of comparison results on published CMCs, which reads as follows:

1 - The Pilot Laboratory will send a letter to the NMI alerting them to any potential problems in their results of the comparison. This letter will be copied to the NMI's RMO, the CC WG on CMC (JCRB-11/6(2)) with jurisdiction over the comparison, the JCRB and the President of the CC.

2 - Within 90 days, the RMO is to send a letter to the CC WG on CMC, the JCRB and the President of the CC (with copy to the NMI) stating the action plan for correcting any potential problems. A resolution statement, in the next RMO annual report on the status of quality systems, will follow stating the results of the corrective action. In those cases when the action plan fails to resolve the problems within 6 months, the RMO will request from JCRB the temporary removal of the CMCs from the KCDB.

3 - The RMO shall request from the JCRB the reinstatement of temporarily removed once the corrective action has been implemented.

4 - The President of the CC shall inform the CIPM of the incident as part of his/her annual report.

The JCRB also recommended to the CIPM that for purposes of publishing CMCs in the KCDB the following guidelines on traceability be followed:

1 - an NMI taking traceability for the entire calibration of its national standard from another laboratory must choose either the BIPM or another NMI signatory to the CIPM MRA having an independent realization of the SI unit or quantity at the appropriate level of uncertainty and having published CMCs in the relevant area;

2 - an NMI taking traceability in this way must still make a full assessment of the uncertainties involved in its calibration activity and must openly declare its chosen traceability route when providing its CMCs for regional and inter-regional reviews;

3 - NMIs are free to make use of certificates from laboratories appropriately accredited by a signatory to the ILAC Arrangement for calibration of instrumentation, major reference standards, or measurement systems which form part of its national realizations provided that the uncertainty of such calibrations has only a minor influence on the total combined uncertainty of the CMC.

Both of these recommendations are expected to be deliberated by the CIPM in 2008.

The JCRB was updated on the progress made by seven NMIs (LACOMET (Costa Rica), DZM and LPM (Croatia), NIS (Egypt), KazInMetr (Kazakhstan), KEBS (Kenya), and VIM (Viet Nam)) since the CIPM MRA workshop in South Africa held in May 2007. Three of the laboratories have submitted their CMCs for intra-RMO review, and the other NMIs are expected to follow through in the coming months.

The next meeting of the JCRB will be held in Wellington, New Zealand on May 1-2, 2008. The JCRB meeting will be preceded by a day-and-half workshop on metrology in New Zealand aimed at local industrial and scientific enterprises.

(Reported by Dr P. Espina, JCRB Executive Secretary)

  Open-access JCRB documents

Feedback from the Directors' meeting 2007

Short report of the main events from the most recent Annual Meeting of NMI Directors at the BIPM, November 2007

Prof A. Wallard, the Director of the BIPM, welcomed everyone to the BIPM and gave an overview of the main events from the BIPM over the previous year. The Director commented that even though the number of Member States had remained constant at 51, there were now 25 Associates; and that at the end of today's meeting four of the new Associates would sign the CIPM MRA - Moldova, Tunisia, Sri Lanka and the FYR Macedonia. He went on to say that the BIPM was in discussion with a number of other major exporting states about becoming Member States or Associates. In addition, the Director spoke about the desire of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to sign the MRA.

Prof Wallard mentioned that the logo of the CIPM MRA was increasingly being requested and used by signatories of the CIPM MRA. He gave the present statistics of the amount of comparisons and CMCs to be found in the KCDB and the number of visits made to the database. Indeed, he mentioned that 2009 would mark the tenth anniversary of the CIPM MRA, and asked the Directors present for their suggestions as to the best way to celebrate this anniversary. The Director commented that he and Dr C. Thomas had just published a paper: A User's Guide to the Information in the BIPM Key Comparison Database, in the The NCSLI journal Measure, volume 2 (4) December 2007.

The CIPM MRA Logo

As of December 2007 there are 62 laboratories authorized to use the CIPM MRA Logo in the measurement and calibration certificates of their services listed in the KCDB. Others who wish to use it can do so by application to the BIPM.

Prof Wallard went on to say that the JCTLM was particularly successful, and that the BIPM was in discussion with the European Union about their ability to recognize the JCTLM as a source of information about "higher order" standards.

The Director of the BIPM spoke about the increasing success of the World Metrology Day initiative, and the 2007 project on the importance of metrology in climate change, which was undertaken in collaboration with the PTB and the NMISA (South Africa) and had been translated into 11 languages. In 2008, the World Metrology Day project would be about the importance of metrology in sport and would be undertaken in collaboration with the NIM (China) to coincide with the next Olympic Games. The interest in the metrology of measurements used in monitoring and quantifying climate change will continue with a joint conference, organized with the WMO, to be held at the headquarters of the WMO in 2009.

As part of his presentation on collaborations with other organizations, the Director of the BIPM mentioned that ISO would publish at the end of this year the third edition of the VIM and the first Supplement of the GUM, as ISO Guides 98 and 99, respectively. ISO would sell hard copies of these documents, but a .pdf file of the contents would be mounted on the BIPM website for free access. As part of a collaboration with the OIML, Professor Wallard mentioned the new joint webportal (www.metrologyinfo.org), and a number of joint publications, which were designed to present a unified face of metrology. The Director of the BIPM mentioned the resolution with ILAC of the long running definitions of CMCs and BMCs - that the ILAC will adopt the definition of the CMC, however, in their documentation there will be explanatory footnotes.

Remote Calibration at NIMJ, presentation (including a video) given by Dr M. Tanaka (NIMJ, Japan)
Dr Tanaka spoke about the use of the GPS common view technology to transmit signals from remote laboratories to the NMIJ. In this way, the supervisor at the NMIJ can monitor in real time the experimental work involved in a distant laboratory in, for example, frequency calibrations. The data is transmitted to the NMIJ, where it is monitored by the supervisor, who can also observe the experiment using a webcam system. If the supervisor thinks that the data is of sufficient quality, the calibration certificate can be issued directly and transferred electronically. In this way there is a significant saving in time and no standards or pieces of equipment are transferred between laboratories. Dr Tanaka described the system as implementing e-trace technology; he showed two videos, one demonstrating a remote frequency calibration and the other a remote calibration of a pressure standard.
Dr K. Carneiro (DFM, Denmark) asked about the technical details involved when the supervisor watches in real time the activities of the technician. Dr H. Ugur (Turkey) asked a technical question about the remote calibration of gauge blocks - would phase information from the laser, which is essential in the calibration, be lost during the transmission of the data. He went on to say that it might be cheaper to have remote calibrations and not transfer equipment, but if the technology limited the physical measurement, there was no saving. Dr Tanaka replied that there were some complexities with this new technology, but it was developing rapidly.
Dr K. Jones (MSL, New Zealand) said that the laboratory's QS would have to be extended to include remote calibrations.

Prof Wallard gave a presentation on collaborations between the BIPM and other intergovernmental organizations and international bodies. He commented that at the BIPM there had been an internal review about the best manner in which to initiate such collaborations and then how best to sustain the collaboration. This review focused on the amount of resources available and the prioritization needed to achieve the task. He gave as an example, the need to promote the CIPM MRA, and how best to achieve this goal. Prof Wallard also spoke about outreach and communication work with developing countries - coordination of international technology cooperation in metrology. He asked if the BIPM should take on such a role given its limited resources. Should a workshop be organized? Should we be working more closely with the JCDCMAS? Prof Wallard asked the Directors to think about the problems of bring developing countries into the international metrology community and how best to achieve this goal, and to write to him with suggestions. Prof E. Göbel, President of the CIPM summarized the discussion by saying that there was evidently a need for greater outreach work, and that this was something that the BIPM should help organize.

(Reported by Dr J. Williams, Editor of Metrologia)

The BIPM Metrology Summer School 2008

The co-Directors of the BIPM Metrology Summer School 2008, Prof Andrew Wallard, Director of the BIPM, Dr Alan Steele from NRC in Ottawa (Canada), and Dr Mike Sargent from LGC in Teddington (United Kingdom), and the Scientific Secretary for the School, Dr Claudine Thomas from the BIPM, are pleased to announce the second BIPM Metrology Summer School which will be held from 29 June to 11 July 2008.

The aim of the School is:

1 - to present a broad review by world experts of the present state of metrology to a select group of about eighty students drawn wholly from the National Metrology Institutes of Member States and Associates of the CGPM, and

2 - to provide the occasion for these young people, from among whom the leaders of tomorrow's world metrology system will emerge, to meet and make the essential contacts for the future.

The program promises to be exciting and well balanced, including a mixture of theory and experiment, Chemistry and Physics, and views of both the current and possible future versions of the International System of Units.

Invited Nobel laureates : Prof Sir Harry Kroto, Prof William Phillips, Prof Klaus von Klitzing
Special guest : Mrs Dava Sobel, author of "Longitude"
and more than forty teachers, chosen among the best Metrology world experts.
Other activities include workshops, poster session, picnic lunches at the BIPM, Summer School party, and warm and friendly atmosphere for two weeks…

  Download the complete programme of the School

Future meetings

 CIPM/OIML/ILAC, BIPM/OIML, OIML/ILAC, and BIPM/ILAC meetings
 to be held at the BIPM, 6 to 7 March 2008

Presentation of the BIPM Quality System, RMO-RAB meeting and workshop, JCDCMAS meeting
 to be held at the BIPM, 10 to 12 March 2008

 Meetings related to the CCQM, and CCQM plenary session
 to be held at the BIPM, 28 March to 4 April 2008

 Meetings related to the CCM, and CCM plenary session
 to be held at the BIPM, 17 to 25 April 2008

 20th JCRB meeting
 to be held in Wellington, New-Zealand, 1 and 2 May 2008

Meeting of Working Group 1 (Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement, GUM) of the Joint Committee for Guides in Metrology (JCGM)
 to be held at the BIPM, 13 to 16 May 2008

 Meetings related to the CCT, and CCT plenary session
 to be held at the BIPM, 19 to 23 May 2008

 BIPM Metrology Summer School 2008
 to be held at the BIPM, 29 June to 11 July 2008