An Assessment of the United States Measurement System:
Addressing Measurement Barriers to Accelerate Innovation
(NIST Special Publication 1048)

The National Institute of Standards and Technology teamed with other organizations to assess the capacity of the nation’s scientific and technical measurement infrastructure – the U.S. Measurement System, or USMS -- to sustain U.S. innovation at a world-leading pace.

The USMS is the complex network of organizations that develop, supply, use, and ensure the validity of measurements. This system spans from university laboratories to commercial testing services and from manufacturers and service providers to regulators and standards bodies.

Involving more than 1,000 people in industry, academia, and government, the assessment included a survey of 11 industrial sectors and technology areas. This yielded more than 700 measurement-related challenges facing U.S. industry today or impeding its progress toward the technologies of tomorrow.

Innovation is vital to the long-term health of the U.S. economy. With this report, NIST intends to initiate a purposeful dialogue on steps that USMS stakeholders can take to address system gaps and enhance USMS capabilities and, in turn, to accelerate technological innovation. [Read the press release.]

Helpful Tools

In Brief: An Assessment of the USMS – Overview and High-Level Summary of Findings [4 MB PDF] (8 pages)

Pointers: How to Use the Report – A few tips on how to find measurement needs and assessment findings at the desired level of detail.

(Note: All files below are presented in .pdf format. To read these files, you can download Adobe Acrobat Reader free.)

Main Report [full version - 14MB] (68 pages)

First Half [10MB] Cover through Chapter IV. Methodology of the Assessment (33 pages)

Second Half [4MB] Chapter V. Results of the Assessment to Chapter VII. Next Steps (3 pages)

Appendices

Appendix A - Descriptions of the NIST USMS Workshops (16 pages)

Appendix B - Case Study Measurement Needs: A Compilation (370 pages)
Browse or click on cross-referenced measurement needs in table of contents

Appendix C - Technology Roadmap Review: Summary Report (112 pages)
Measurement needs extracted from publicly available industry technology roadmaps.

Appendix D - Contributors to the 2006 Assessment of the USMS by NIST (19 pages)

Appendix E - NIST's Realization and Dissemination of the Units of the SI (58 pages)
Descriptions of the seven base units of the International System of Units (SI) and how NIST accurately measures and distributes these fundamental quantities and derived units.

Appendix F - The Methodology of the Inferential Analysis (45 pages)
Approach used to infer the state of the USMS.

Appendix G - Descriptions of Broad Technologies (12 pages)
Overview of technology areas -- nanotechnology, disaster first-responder technology, bio-medical imaging, and magnetic data storage – included in the sample surveyed for measurement needs.

Appendix H - Analysis of Case-Study Measurement Needs: Summary Report (276 pages)
USMS Measurement Need Data Book, containing a series of correlation tables and distribution charts based on summaries of more than 300 detailed measurement needs.

Appendix I - Summary Results of Inferential Analysis of Measurement Needs (26 pages)
High-level summaries of the results of the inferential analysis for each sector/technology area.

For more information:
Belinda Collins
Director, Technology Services
usms@nist.gov