Measurement and Instrumentation Technology-Reflections on the Present and Future

摘要

Measurement and instrumentation is a key enabling technology of any industrialised, developed economy. It stands at present before significant challenges. It is therefore important for those concerned with the technology to reflect on those challenges and to consider these challenges and the appropriate responses. Those challenges are in the first instance technological, consisting of the continued rapid growth and development of the technology and an expansion of the fields of application and of the demands, which they impose. The second group of challenges are the political, economic and social changes which the world has undergone in the last decade and which are transforming the environment in which technology works. The present reflections will attempt to examine those challenges and the threats and opportunities they offer.