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Eveline Domini is the standardisation manager in the research division of the French National Metrology Institute, LNE. She also works as a consultant for EURAMET to support the development of the standardisation activities in the European Metrology Research Programmes. On the occasion of World Standards Day, EURAMET has asked Eveline to share her views on metrology and standardisation.

Why is it important to link research in measurement to standardisation?
Standardisation is more and more recognised as a great tool for the dissemination of the research results and a key channel for the transfer of innovations into the market. On the other hand, accurate and reliable measurements help to ensure standards are fit for purpose and enable demonstration of compliance.

EURAMET's European Metrology Research Programmes, EMRP and EMPIR, enable standards and metrology professionals to work together. EMPIR introduced normative metrology research projects for priority documentary standards to support policy implementation and accelerate dissemination of research outputs. These normative research projects have a clear focus to address the needs of the standardisation groups in any area on traceable measurements, to support the standardisation work or develop new priority standardisation documents.

What is your role?
In my role as EURAMET's facilitator for normative calls, I assist metrologists in the preparation of the normative research projects, which were newly introduced in EMPIR. I was involved in the launch of the first normative call in 2015. Since then I have been raising awareness of the importance of standardisation for research and promoting the normative projects to metrologists and standardisation experts. Thousands of metrology experts are already involved in standardisation as members of standardisation groups and dedicate their time and expertise for the development of European and international standards.

What are first results of the standardisation and metrology collaboration?
The collaboration between the metrology and standardisation communities helped to identify standardisation research needs linked to traceable measurements and the development of normative research projects addressing these needs.Since the first normative EMPIR call, 12 normative projects were successfully funded to target the priority needs of European and international standardisation groups. If we consider the two first EMPIR calls launched in 2014 and 2015, 60 funded research projects have been selected and 72% of them identified an input to standardisation during the lifetime of the projects.

A normative call is planned every year until 2020. There are still many opportunities for the standardisation and metrology communities to develop close collaboration for future normative research projects on common needs.