Feature Papers to Celebrate the Inaugural Issue of Standards

Standards can be international, national, regional, or corporate. They cover production and consumption, social responsibility, health and safety, quality management, laboratories, diverse devices, and equipment, to mention the most popular ones. They are the basis for our everyday activities: air, water, and food quality, information security, codes, accounting, reporting, etc. Despite the great number of existing standards, new and improved ones are appearing daily. The standardization process includes development, acceptance, and implementation of new or improved standards. The stakeholders can be companies, standardization institutions, governments, users, interest groups, professionals, and scientists. The international organization for standardization, ISO, has a guidance document on new work with three parts: 1) new standardized areas, 2) new fields of work, and 3) new work item proposals within existing committees. New standards need to be inspected, verified, and their quality assessed. In addition to technical standards, other standards and norms exist, e.g., patents, certificates, permits. They improve quality, reliability, efficiency, durability, and other properties of goods and services. They can be voluntary or obligatory, used internally or externally. A rapid development of standards is expected in the future. Climate change, sustainability, and demographic trends will require rigorous changes to the ways in which we live, behave, produce, and use energy. Standardization will play an important role in process and product design, production, distribution, consumption, and recovery.