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  • COMMENT

Stop squandering data: make units of measurement machine-readable

In the age of big data, it is time to ensure that units are routinely documented for easy, unambiguous exchange of information.
  1. Robert Hanisch

    1. Robert Hanisch is the director of the Office of Data and Informatics at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA, and the chair of the CODATA Task Group on Digital Representation of Units of Measurement (DRUM).

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  2. Stuart Chalk

    1. Stuart Chalk is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of North Florida, Jacksonville, Florida, USA.

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  3. Romain Coulon

    1. Romain Coulon is a member of the Ionizing Radiation Department at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), Sevres, France.

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  4. Simon Cox

    1. Simon Cox is a research scientist in the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s Land and Water Environmental Information Systems programme, Melbourne, Australia.

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  5. Steven Emmerson

    1. Steven Emmerson is a software engineer and author of the UDUNITS system at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, USA.

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  6. Francisco Javier Flamenco Sandoval

    1. Francisco Javier Flamenco Sandoval is the director of informatics and communication at the National Metrology Centre (CENAM), Querétaro, Mexico.

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  7. Alistair Forbes

    1. Alistair Forbes is a fellow in mathematical modelling and experimental data analysis at the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, UK.

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  8. Jeremy Frey

    1. Jeremy Frey is a professor of physical chemistry and head of computational systems chemistry at the University of Southampton, Southampton, UK.

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  9. Blair Hall

    1. Blair Hall leads the Digital Metrology program at the Measurement Standards Laboratory of New Zealand, Lower Hutt, New Zealand.

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  10. Richard Hartshorn

    1. Richard Hartshorn is a professor in the School of Physical and Chemical Sciences, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand; and Secretary General of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.

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  11. Pascal Heus

    1. Pascal Heus is an independent consultant in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

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  12. Simon Hodson

    1. Simon Hodson is the executive director of the Committee on Data of the International Science Council (CODATA), Paris, France.

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  13. Kazumoto Hosaka

    1. Kazumoto Hosaka is the deputy director of the Research Institute for Physical Measurement, National Metrology Institute of Japan, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba, Japan.

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  14. Daniel Hutzschenreuter

    1. Daniel Hutzschenreuter is a member of the Metrology for Digital Transformation Department, National Metrology Institute of Germany (PTB), Braunschweig, Germany; and chair of the International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM) Digital SI Expert Group.

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  15. Chu-Shik Kang

    1. Chu-Shik Kang is a staff scientist at the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science, Daejeon, South Korea.

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  16. Susanne Picard

    1. Susanne Picard is the coordinator of the Key Comparisons Data Base at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), Sevres, France.

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  17. Ryan White

    1. Ryan White is a research officer for digital metrology at the National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

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In 1999, when NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter missed its intended orbit and burned up in the Martian atmosphere, the media had a heyday over the reason: one team had used metric units in its thrust calculations, another, imperial. The navigation software that exchanged this information lacked a built-in process to check units. So when one team’s software produced data in imperial units rather than the expected metric ones, the spacecraft was set on the wrong trajectory. The result was the loss of five years of effort and hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars.

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Nature 605, 222-224 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01233-w

The opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the authors’ organizations or their governing bodies.

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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