IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 61, NO. 8, AUGUST 2012 2107 Measurement Fundamentals: A Pragmatic V Luca Mari, Paolo Carbone, Senior Member, IEEE, and Dario Petri, Fellow, IEEE Abstract—Measurements are more and more required in an increasing variety of human activities to acquire reliable informa- tion useful for effectively supporting decision-making processes. Furthermore, the entities whose properties are to be measured and the measuring systems are becoming increasingly complex, hardly to be modeled and managed. In thisrapidly evolving scenario, several issues concerning the fundamentals of measure- mentscience and technology arise. The purpose of this paper is to discuss some aspects of the crucial question about which evaluation processes can be considered measurements. Rather than focusing on formal conditions or technological constraints, we propose a pragmatic characterization of measurement, under the assumption that a better comprehension of the concept can be achieved by identifying and discussing the basic features which justify the reliability attributed to measurement results. With such an interdisciplinary approach, this work aims at promoting a broad discussion among interested researchers, even working in different scientific disciplines, so to increase the synergies among different research areas and to improve the body of knowledge about measurement fundamentals. Index Terms—M/Measurement, M/Modeling, M/Multivariable systems, U/Uncertain systems, U/Uncertainty. I. INTRODUCTION I N MANY, if not all, human activities, measurement is con- sidered a fundamental process to obtain reliable information on the empirical world,in view of the Galilean motto of measuring what is measurable and making measurable what is notyet.Nowadays, a systematic adoption of measurement is particularly solicited by the widespread application of techno- science in the social, industrial, economical, . . .fields.Once specifically aimed at evaluating physical quantities, measure- ments are, today, more and more required in biology, medicine, economy, sociology, psychology, . . .Furthermore, measuring systems are becoming complex entities, in which the customary measurement techniques have to be extended to multivariate measurands, and the measurement of physical quantities has to be often complemented by the measurement of nonphysical properties, sometimes called “weakly defined measurement” [1] or simply “soft measurement.” An excellent reference on this matter is the document Evolving Needs for Metrology in Manuscript received November 9, 2011; revised January 4, 2012; accepted January 9, 2012.Date of publication April 30, 2012; date of current version July 13,2012.The Associate Editor coordinating the review process for this paper was Dr. Wendy Van Moer. L. Mari is with Università Carlo Cattaneo (LIUC), 21053 Castellanza, Italy (e-mail: lmari@liuc.it). P. Carbone is with the University of Perugia, 06125 Perugia, Italy (e-mail: carbone@diei.unipg.it). D. Petriis with the University of Trento,38050 Trento, Italy (e-mail: petri@disi.unitn.it). Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIM.2012.2193693 Trade, Industry and Society and the Role of the BIPM [2], states, for example, that,currently, “an estimated 80% (of the world trade) is affected by standards and regulations” and according to various studies, “the cost to producers and se providers of complying with standards can be 10% of prod tion costs.” Of course, measurement is the basis to assess compliance. The Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM) document lists some of the application areas where the role of measurement is increasingly critical: They inclu “transport; information technology, navigation, and telecom- munications; electronics and optics; electromagnetic and i izing radiation; energy; climate change and environmental pollution control; clinical chemistry and laboratory medicin food safety; antidoping; pharmaceuticals; and forensics and security.” This evolving scenario arises several significant issues for measurement science, not only at the operative level—for ex- ample, about the possibility to apply the now-standard proce dures of uncertainty evaluation specified by the Guide to th Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement [3] in such dive fields—but also, and primarily, in reference to the state an nature of measurement science itself. A fundamental critical problem relates to the very concept of measurement: Is its acceptation, as commonly understood in the measurement of mechanical, optical, thermal, electrical, . . . quantities, already adequate and directly applicable in this broader context? T question is not only lexical, i.e.,whether a single entry in a vocabulary may accommodate all usages of the term or only related to the, however important, goal of mutual understand- ing,which is the basic goal thatdrove a number of leading international organizations to gather into the Joint Commit for Guidesin Metrology and to produce the International Vocabulary of Metrology (VIM3) [4]. Rather, an inquiry on a widely shared meaning of “measurement” is useful to give a convincing justification to the customary claim of the “spec reliability” of measurement itself, which is surely not assum in the case of, e.g.,subjective judgment or guess: The public trust attributed to measurement results and the resource s ing acceptable for measurement should not be approved for such other activities. If the generic process of assigning a quantity value to a quantity of interest is termed “evaluation” (as in the abstract case of “function evaluation”), so thatmeasurement, subjec- tive judgment, and guess are all examples of evaluations, the problem may be then formulated: Whatdoes itcharacterize measurement as a specific kind of evaluation? Since the problem is not conceptually new (although per this formulation is), some answers have been already prop in the past. At least three well-known general standpoints be mentioned. 0018-9456/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE