Units and their representations form the basis of measurements. The accurate interpretation and interoperability of units are of critical importance in the operation of today’s world, from timekeeping, trade, manufacturing to the success of critical missions.
BIPM, the international treaty organization created by the Metre Convention, defines the International System of Units (commonly called the "SI System") composed of 7 basic units that are used internationally as standard units. There are, however, pre-SI units, as well as other SI-derived units, in used today internationally. The digital usage of these units for various quantities, and the interaction between units and quantities require a refined treatment for usage by information systems.
TC UNITS is a standing committee chartered to provide international standards for:
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representation and encoding of units, quantities, and dimensions;
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mechanisms for encoding and interpretation of formulas that utilize units.
The TC aims to work closely with the BIPM, CIPM and CGPM towards an interoperable “Digital SI” infrastructure, and advocate such throughout technologies and standards developed at CalConnect.
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Standardization of a data model for units representation, covering units, quantities and dimensions.
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Standardization of serialization languages of the units data model, including UnitsML which is an XML serialization of the units model.
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Standardization of representation schemes used to encode information into the units data model.
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Guidelines and mechanisms for the integration of the units model with other existing technologies, such as UnitsML with MathML.
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Standardization and operation of the UnitsDB register, which provides authoritative information about units in use today.
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The UnitsML website at https://www.unitsml.org, as an introductory website to the UnitsML technology suite.
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UnitsML standard for the encoding, representation and interpretation of units
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UnitsDB register used for semantic encoding and transformation of units