 KCDB Newsletter |
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New signatories of the CIPM MRA |
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In addition to Macedonia, the FYR of,, Moldova, Sri Lanka, and Tunisia who signed the CIPM MRA on 14 November 2007 (see KCDB Newsletter No 8), two other Associates of the CGPM also signed the CIPM MRA recently:
- Albania, Associate since 10 September 2007, signed on 10 October 2007 by Mrs Myrvete Pazaj, General Director, General Directorate of Metrology and Calibration, GDMC;
- Bolivia, Associate since 4 April 2008, signed on 16 May 2008 by Ing. Miguel Campos Botello, Executive General Director, Instituto Boliviano de Metrología, IBMETRO.
Ing. Miguel Campos Botello, accompanied by Mrs Luzmila Carpio, Ambassador of Bolivia in France, signing the CIPM MRA on 16 May 2008 in Prof Andrew Wallard's office, at the BIPM.
(behind the scene, from left to right: Dr M. Stock, Dr R. Davis, Dr P. Allisy-Roberts, and Mrs B. Pérent, Heads of the BIPM Electricity, Mass, Ionizing Radiation, and Administration Sections, respectively)
Consequently, the CIPM MRA has now been signed by representatives of 73 institutes from 45 Member States, 26 Associates of the CGPM, and two international organizations, and covers a further 117 institutes designated by the signatory bodies or other appropriate official bodies as holders of specific national standards. Click here to access the full list of participants in the CIPM MRA.
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Key and supplementary comparisons |
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The key and supplementary comparisons database now covers 620 key comparisons (79 from the BIPM, 310 from the CCs, and 231 from RMOs) and 181 supplementary comparisons.
Number of key comparisons (in blue) and of supplementary comparisons (in pink) registered in the KCDB: evolution over the last five years.
One observes that the rate over a mean period of one year of new comparisons registered in the KCDB remains stable at a level of about 20 new supplementary comparisons, but has decreased from about 40 to 30 new key comparisons. This fluctuation comes from a delay in registering new key comparisons decided by the CCQM Working Groups. This problem is now being corrected thanks to close cooperation between the KCDB Office and the CCQM Working Group Chairs.
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.
On 8 June 2008, among the 620 key comparisons that were registered:
- 88 corresponded 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"),
- 73 of the 79 on-going BIPM key comparisons had results published in the KCDB, which are regularly extended when new data becomes available (most of them serves also as "master" key comparisons to which other CC and RMO key comparisons are linked (see the example of 10 V Zener diodes: six comparisons linked together), and
- another 221 CC and RMO key comparisons had their final reports approved and posted in the KCDB website, and corresponding tables of numbers and graphs entered in the database.
All together, the KCDB currently displays a total of more than 1 000 graphs of equivalence.
The results of 76 RMO key comparisons - 26 conducted by APMP, 7 by COOMET, 40 by EUROMET, and 3 by SIM - are published in the KCDB - see "Comparisons News" for the list of the most recent publications.
Linkage has also been carried out for 14 bilateral key comparisons subsequent to full-scale CC key comparisons; their results are added on the appropriate graphs of equivalence. The most complete graph of equivalence available from the KCDB displays 66 degrees of equivalence, obtained from four different RMO key comparisons linked to CCM.M-K1 (1 kg stainless steel mass standards).
The final reports of 54 of the 181 supplementary comparisons registered in the KCDB are also posted in the KCDB.
Note that final reports of key and supplementary comparisons posted in the KCDB are also generally published in the series of Metrologia Technical Supplements.
 Latest KC results published
Participation in key and supplementary comparisons (updated on 9 June 2008)
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Calibration and Measurement Capabilities (CMCs) |
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At the end of May 2008, more than 20 000 CMCs were published in the KCDB. This is an additional 600 CMCs compared to the time of the 18th JCRB meeting, one year ago, but not many more than at the time of the 19th JCRB meeting. Indeed, over the last six months, 15 newly approved sets of CMCs were published, among which the set identified as "EUROMET.EM.4.2007" (285 new CMCs and hundreds of revised CMCs from EURAMET in Electricity and Magnetism), but 364 CMCs from Hungary were deleted on 28 March 2008 due to a lack of an approved Quality System (QS). Details on the number of CMCs currently published in the KCDB, per country and per metrology area, are available in real-time from the Statistics page of the KCDB.
Number of CMCs recorded in the KCDB: evolution over the last six years.
Latest CMCs published
Deletion and re-instatement of CMCs on their compliance with an approved QS
On 15 May 2008, 662 CMCs were still greyed-out from the KCDB due to the lack of an approved Quality System (QS). The main actions related to Quality Systems that took place over the last six-month period are as follows:
- All CMCs from LATU (Uruguay) that had been removed from the KCDB on 10 August 2007 were re-instated on 30 March 2008.
- The CMCs from NRC (Canada) in Length - Laser radiations - deleted from the KCDB in July 2005, were replaced by 10 newly approved CMCs on 25 March 2008.
- All CMCs from MKEH (Hungary), namely 364 CMCs covering all fields of metrology, were greyed-out on 28 March 2008.
- All CMCs from Cuba (Mass and Related Quantities and Ionizing radiation) were reinstated on 15 May 2008, following a decision of the 20th JCRB.
The KCDB Office notified the 20th JCRB that it may be the case that some of those CMCs that were greyed-out in July 2005, following the decision of the 15th JCRB, will never be re-published as they are out of date and no longer correspond to any services actually delivered by the laboratory. The KCDB Office therefore asked the JCRB to clarify the status of these CMCs, should they be deleted definitively from the KCDB. This will probably be further considered by the RMOs.
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| In brief |
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- Georgia became an Associate of the CGPM on 1 January 2008. The Georgian National Agency for Standards, Technical Regulations and Metrology (GEOSTM) may soon become a new participant in the CIPM MRA.
- The first CMCs declared by Croatia (in the field of Pressure measurements) were approved by the JCRB on 28 April 2008, and consequently published in the KCDB on 16 May 2008.
- On 22 May 2008, the Director of KazInMetr sent a letter to Prof. Wallard, Director of the BIPM, requesting the change of status of the Republic of Kazakhstan from Associate of the CGPM to Member of the BIPM. This change has the approval of the Kazakhstan Ministry of Industry and Trade, and the matter has been forwarded to the Ministries of Justice, Economics and Foreign Affairs for formal approval and appropriation. Once approved, the Kazakhstani Ministry of Foreign Affairs will implement the change. It is expected that the Republic of Kazakhstan will become a Member of the BIPM in 2009.
- Dr Pedro Espina was replaced by Dr Luis Mussio, from LATU (Uruguay), as Executive Secretary of the JCRB on 5 May 2008, just after the 20th meeting. P. Espina served as JCRB Executive Secretary for three years.
- On 6 June 2008, INPL (Israel) has been accepted in EURAMET for participation in CIPM MRA related activities. This arrangement constitutes a provisional term of participation to last 5 years.
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Feedback from the 4th RMOs/RCABs meeting |
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The 4th joint meeting of the Regional Metrology Organizations (RMOs) and the Regional Cooperation of Accreditation Bodies (RCABs) was held at the BIPM, on 10-11 March 2008.
The meeting had representation from APMP, COOMET, EURAMET, SADCMET and SIM, and from APLAC, EA and SADCA, as well as from the BIPM and ILAC.
The main topic of the meeting was to find ways for a closer cooperation between the two communities, in order to avoid duplication of efforts in the review of Quality Systems of NMIs. A survey conducted by APMP about the relation between NMIs and accreditation was presented. As a result, a Joint Task Group on the Review Assessment Process (JTG - RAP) was established to work on this subject.
Other topics that were discussed included:
- the influence of the device under test (DUT) on the evaluation of uncertainties to be declared in CMCs, and
- the need to extend the list of Service Categories in the present structure of the KCDB to accommodate small laboratories capabilities.
The 5th joint meeting will take place in March 2009 at the BIPM.
(Reported by Dr L. Mussio, Rapporteur of the meeting)
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Feedback from the 20th JCRB |
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The 20th meeting of the JCRB was hosted by MSL-IRL in Wellington (New Zealand) on 1-2 May 2008.
The meeting included the presence of representatives from three countries of the gulf region and from the GSO (GCC Standards Organization), a representative from Morocco, and a representative from ILAC. The gulf countries participating in the meeting were Qatar, Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The representatives presented the plans of the region for the development of metrology institutes as well as the plans for creation of a regional cooperation in metrology. The representative from Morocco gave a presentation on present status and capabilities of the Laboratoire National de Métrologie (LNM).
The representative from ILAC, presented to the JCRB a brief report on the ILAC activities as well as the present status of the new ISO standard for Proficiency Tests (ISO 17043). He also presented feedback from the accreditation community about the RMOs/RCABs meeting held in March at the BIPM.
The JCRB was updated on the progress made since the 19th JCRB by seven NMIs, LACOMET (Costa Rica), DZM and LPM (Croatia), NIS (Egypt), KazInMetr (Kazakhstan), KEBS (Kenya), and VIM (Viet Nam), in relation to the CIPM MRA workshop in South Africa held in May 2007.
A new document "Guide to the implementation of the CIPM MRA" was presented. The final version will be discussed via email and submitted to the CIPM before publication on the BIPM website.
A discussion was held on the subject "Proficiency tests as a mean for the dissemination of traceability and ISO Guide 43". It was agreed that PTs are not a mean for dissemination of traceability. It was also agreed that ISO Guide 43 is not applicable to the CIPM MRA comparisons process.
It was resolved to:
- consolidate CIPM MRA documents by category and reformat and number the documents according to the BIPM internal QS procedures,
- modify Recommendation 19/4 item 3 (see KCDB Newsletter No 8), removing the word "major". This recommendation now reads:
Recommendation 19/4
The JCRB recommends that for purposes of publishing CMC 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, 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.
The date and place of the next JCRB meeting is currently under discussion.
Open-access JCRB documents
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Visits to the KCDB website |
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The total number of visits of monthly external connections to the KCDB website has increased from 10 300 to 27 200 between August 2006 and August 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 shown 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.
The numbers displayed for the three first months of 2008 are only estimation. We observed a huge increase of the requests entered in the free-text search over that period (up to hundreds of thousands over one month), essentially the same requests repeated every 10 or 30 seconds over hours and days exploring all possible answers. We identified that these automatic searches were carried out by "robots", which scrutinized the KCDB site. These are not malicious attacks as it does not alter the content of the database or the way the information is displayed on the web. On the contrary, they index the content of the KCDB site and provide links to our site from search engines available on the Internet. No action was thus taken for the time being, except doubling the front server to be able to handle all requests. It remains difficult to know the number or "real" visits, which is the reason why the curves are shown with dashed lines on the above Figure. We are currently implementing a new tool for analyzing the log-on files and hope to get more robust estimation in near future. It should also be pointed out that the "bump" observed in June and July 2007 on the red curve is probably also due to the same phenomenon.
One can, however, conclude that more and more users navigate on the KCDB website, and we receive regular feedback from National Metrology Institutes. We think that they constitute a part of the audience, but that our site attracts also other communities such as regulators, accreditors, and commercial and industrial companies.
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The BIPM Metrology Summer School 2008 |
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The BIPM Metrology Summer School 2008 will be held at the BIPM from 29 June 2008 to 11 July 2008. The programme of lectures, visits and workshop activities is detailed in the Summer School website. It contains:
- 39 lectures on four main themes - "From classical SI to new SI", "The international organization of Metrology", "Metrology in Physics and its applications", "Metrology in Chemistry and its applications",
- 4 workshops on "Chemical methods", "Calculation of uncertainties by Monte-Carlo", "Electricity: the Quantum Hall Effect", "Quality System, Accreditation, ISO Guide 34, and the KCDB",
- comprehensive visits to the five scientific sections of the BIPM (including the fabrication of prototypes kilogramme),
- visit to the LNE laboratories in Trappes (France), and cultural activities including a talk by Dava Sobel, author of "Longitude", in the Cassini room of the Paris Observatory (in partnership with the LNE and the OP, respectively),
- a poster session where 20 posters will be presented by School students, and
- a number of social activities, including the "Summer School party".
The BIPM received 143 nominations of students from the Directors of NMIs, among whom 92 students from 36 Member States of the BIPM and Associates of the CGPM were selected in February 2008.
We have invited a total of 42 teachers for lectures and workshop activities, all experts in their fields, and we will have the pleasure to receive three Nobel laureates: Prof Sir Harry Kroto, Prof William Phillips, and Prof Klaus von Klitzing, as well as Mrs Dava Sobel, scientific journalist. The heads of the BIPM scientific sections and their staff will be involved in the BIPM visits and some of them will act as Chairpersons for the lectures.
Download the complete programme of the School
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* The NCSL International 2008 Annual Workshop and Symposium, "NCSL International", will be held in Orlando, Florida (United States), from 3 to 7 August 2008, around the theme "Metrology's impact on business".
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The keynote address will be given by Dr Richard Davis, Head of the BIPM Mass Section, under the title "Why the kilogram should be redefined".
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* The International Congress of Metrology, held every two years in France, and organized under the auspices of the Collège Français de Métrologie, will take place in Paris from 22 to 25 June 2009, with about 1000 participants from 50 countries.
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Paris'2009 is a meeting place for industrials and scientists around oral presentations, poster sessions providing privileged contact with specialists, six round table sessions, an exhibition showing technical innovations and opportunities to talk with measurement professionals, and technical visits to companies.
The subjects that are planned for the round table sessions are:
- What's at stake for metrology in the health field;
- Metrology and reduction of greenhouse effects gas emissions;
- Metrology and industrial performance;
- Industrial temperatures and new materials;
- Accreditation, economic and strategic issues;
- Wireless measurements in the industrial environment.
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The subject for the plenary session scheduled on Wednesday 24 June 2009 will probably be the international recognition of measurement certificates, giving the opportunity to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the CIPM MRA.
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