ISO Focus, April 2009.Pdf

ISO Focus The Magazine of the International Organization for Standardization Volume 6, No. 4, April 2009, ISSN 1729-8709

the ISO Media and

• IFRA : Standards save cost and effort for newspaper industry • Towards flawless data exchange © ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus Contents

1 Comment Karen Higginbottom, Chair of ISO/IEC JTC 1 – Tackling the challenges of a digital age 2 World Scene Highlights of events from around the world 3 ISO Scene Highlights of news and developments from ISO members

ISO Focus 0904.indd 1 07.04.2009 16:04:07 4 Guest View Reiner Mittelbach, Chief Executive Officer, IFRA ISO Focus is published 11 times a year (single issue : July-August). It is available in English. 8 Main Focus Annual subscription 158 Swiss Francs Individual copies 16 Swiss Francs

Publisher ISO Central Secretariat (International Organization for Standardization) 1, ch. de la Voie-Creuse CH-1211 Genève 20 Switzerland Telephone + 41 22 749 01 11 ISO and the Media Fax + 41 22 733 34 30 E-mail [email protected] Web www.iso.org

Manager : Roger Frost Acting Editor : Maria Lazarte Assistant Editor : Janet Maillard • Peer-to-peer connectivity made easy Artwork : Pascal Krieger and Pierre Granier • And the Emmy goes to … The MPEG story ISO Update : Dominique Chevaux • Behind the scenes of the global film industry Subscription enquiries : Sonia Rosas Friot • JPEG – Still photography brought to life ISO Central Secretariat • Drawing with light – From chemicals to pixels Telephone + 41 22 749 03 36 • Comparing apples with apples – Helping you make the right Fax + 41 22 749 09 47 choice E-mail [email protected] • The colourful world of print – Standards at your service © ISO, 2009. All rights reserved. • Long live ISO 32000-1 – The PDF standard The contents of ISO Focus are copyright • Optical data storage – How long will it last ? and may not, whether in whole or in • Using XML in metadata-enabled infrastructure part, be reproduced, stored in a retrieval • Making life easier in an XML world system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without 32 Developments and initiatives written permission of the Editor. Paving the way for flawless data exchange • The consequences The articles in ISO Focus express the views of silence of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of ISO or of any of its members. 36 New on the shelf Supporting privacy protection in health informatics • Facilitating ISSN 1729-8709 Printed in Switzerland implementation of ISO 14000 family in 12 languages Cover photo : iStock. Montage ISO 37 Coming up ISO Focus April 2009 © ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus Comment

1 Comment Karen Higginbottom, Chair of ISO/IEC JTC 1 – Tackling the challenges of a digital age 2 World Scene Tackling the challenges Highlights of events from around the world 3 ISO Scene of a digital age Highlights of news and developments from ISO members or many, the origins of mass com- mately 2 200 standards with the active cations have been published as Interna- 4 Guest View munication and the media can be contribution of the committee’s 42 par- tional Standards under this mechanism. Reiner Mittelbach, Chief Executive Officer, IFRA Ftraced to Mainz, Germany, where ticipant (P) members. These standards further contribute to Gutenberg invented the movable type an integrated information technology ISO/IEC JTC 1 comprises 17 8 Main Focus printing press in 1450, enabling wide infrastructure. subcommittees, four special working distribution of information. It took hun- groups, three study groups and one work- Significantly more technolo- dreds of years and significant techno- ing group. With the extensive scope of gy than a printing press, paper and ink logical innovation to bring those first the committee’s work, collaboration and is required for a user to publish text or steps to the digital era. cooperation between subcommittees, as video on the Web. From user interfaces Standardization of digital media, well as with external liaison organiza- and accessibility to programming lan- on the other hand, began 30 years ago tions, is essential to provide users with guages and coded character sets, from with the publication in 1979 of ISO 1001, compatibility, interoperability and a sus- office equipment (Gutenberg’s printer which identifies the filing structure of a tainable information technology infra- would have been standardized here !) to magnetic tape. This standard was a par- structure. IT security . . . all elements are needed tial response to business demands for the by even the most novice users to publish storage, transmission and accessing of their content. The beauty of this technol- ISO and the Media vast amounts of information, a significant “ Perhaps the most ogy, however, is that if done well, the driving force in IT standardization. exciting development publisher may not only find it “ easy ” but also intuitive. Although this state of affairs con- today is that on the Web, tinues, perhaps the most exciting devel- With such a long history, ISO/IEC opment today is that on the Web, anyone anyone can become JTC 1 is proud to be a major contributor can become a published author. Every a published author.” to this work and appreciates the oppor- individual, with very little investment, tunity to share with ISO Focus some of can compose his or her own text, pho- our key efforts, which you will find in tographs and videos and circulate them In fact, beyond the difficulty of the Main Focus of this issue. quickly and widely to audiences that can making sure that a multiplicity of hardware reach millions or even billions. and software from different locations and in different languages can interoperate, it According to Adam Singer in “ The is also important to ensure “ backwards Future Buzz ” (a blog about marketing/ compatibility ” – making sure that tech- PR strategies) there are approximately nologies that may be considered outdated one trillion unique URLs in Google’s are taken into account. Why ? Because in index alone. And, if one were to view a sector where the lifespan of technology all of the content that was on YouTube can be as short as 18 months, it is crucial in 2008, it would take over 412 years. to ensure the ability to migrate technol- Imagine the vast number of building ogy over the lifetime of the data. This blocks of interoperable technology that creates a hectic and challenging envi- are required to create such an amazing ronment, which often requires Interna- and complex infrastructure ! tional Standards to be developed in as little as nine months. When the joint technical committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information tech- Because it is recognized that Karen Higginbottom, nology, was created in 1987, it brought considerable information technology Chair, ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information together technical committees from ISO work is done outside the formal stand- technology and the International Electrotechnical ards environment, ISO/IEC JTC 1 has a Commission (IEC), merging the exper- process that provides a special opportu- tise of both organizations to develop IT nity for publicly available specifications standards that would enable the wide- from recognized consortia to be submit- spread sharing of information. Since then, ted for voting and approval as Interna- ISO/IEC JTC 1 has published approxi- tional Standards. Currently, 96 specifi-

ISO Focus April 2009 1 © ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus World Scene

Maritime transport marine technology, should to fight climate change continue to collaborate with IMO on this subject. “ Maritime transport and the climate change challenge ” For more information : was the theme of this year’s Cpt. Charlie H. Piersall, expert meeting on transport Chair, ISO/TC 8 and trade facilitation organ- ([email protected]) ized by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Shared waters, shared Development (UNCTAD) in opportunities February 2009. The theme of this year’s World Experts from 33 countries and Water Day, a UN initiative 10 organizations reviewed the celebrated on 22 March, was impact of maritime transport “ Transboundary waters : The EXPRESS expert panel. Photo, courtesy of EFTA on greenhouse gas (GHG) shared waters, shared opportu- emissions, the consequences of nities.” An objective directly The Indian Ministry of Com- EXPRESS action global warming, and measures and indirect- merce and Industry imposed for Europe to mitigate GHG emissions ly supported a six-month ban in January from international shipping. by over 430 The European Commission 2009 on grounds of public ISO Interna- wants to ensure that standardiza- health and safety. Chinese Presentations were made by tional tion in Europe is responsive to toys are reported to account academia, research institu- Standards. market demands and continues for about 60 % of the toy tions, international organiza- to support public policy needs. market in India. tions, governments, the ship- World The European Commission has ping and port industries, as Water Day asked key players to review The deadlock was eased when well as the private sector. highlight- standardization in Europe and to India announced on 2 March ed the make strategic recommendations that it would allow the import In his keynote address, the challenges for its development during the of Chinese toys conforming Secretary-General of the Club raised by decade to come. to the specifications of Inter- de Rome, Mr. Martin Lee (see the national Standards for toy photo below), highlighted the Janvier 2009.indd 1 world’s The Expert Panel for the safety, such as ISO 8124, and connection between maritime 15.01.2009 16:29:26 263 trans-boundary lake and Review of the European Stand- accompanied by certificates transport, climate change and river basins, which include the ardization System (EXPRESS) of conformity issued by labo- the global economic and finan- territory of 145 countries and began its work in January 2009 ratories and testing bodies cial context, and underlined cover nearly half of the and comprises representatives accredited under the Multi- the importance of getting the Earth’s land surface. from member states’ public lateral Agreement of the maritime industry involved for authorities, industry, European International Laboratory meeting development and sus- ISO’s standards provide and national standards bodies, Accreditation Cooperation tainability objectives. practical tools for developing consumer and environmental (ILAC). common understanding and organizations and other relevant Several experts agreed that future cooperation between countries stakeholders. ILAC bases its accreditation initiatives to reduce GHG emis- on aspects such as water activities on conformity sions due to shipping should quality (ISO/TC 147) and Several CEOs from ISO mem- assessment standards devel- fall within the auspices of the measurement (ISO/TC 113), ber bodies take part, as well as oped by ISO and its partner, International Maritime Organ- and the management of water Alan Bryden, former ISO Secre- the International Electrotech- ization. It was also noted that supply services (ISO/TC 224), tary-General, who contributes by nical Commission, with the ISO could be an important including under crisis condi- bringing an international participation of ILAC and the contributor based on its expe- tions (IWA 6:2008). ISO also perspective and outlining global International Accreditation rience in developing manage- develops water-related stand- challenges. The EXPRESS Forum (IAF). ment standards applied in the Group will deliver its final field of maritime transport. ards for irrigation, plastics report in December 2009. These standards include piping systems and much The ISO delegation agreed more. http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/ ISO/IEC 17025 which gives the requirements for compe- that ISO/TC 8, Ships and standards_policy/review_of_ ISO Secretary-General tence for testing and calibra- standardisation/index_en.htm Rob Steele comments : “ As tion laboratories. An estimated with so many other global 40 000 laboratories world- challenges, the ISO system ISO standards help to wide are accredited to the has a proven track record of ease trade tensions standard. distilling international exper- The importance of ISO ISO, ILAC and IAF recently tise into globally relevant standards in facilitating world signed a Memorandum of standards that provide trade was underlined at the Understanding to strengthen concrete help for achieving beginning of March 2009 their cooperation. public policy goals and when they helped relax a ban objectives, such as those of on the import of Chinese toys courtesy of Fairplay World Water Day.” into India. Shipping Weekly

2 ISO Focus April 2009 © ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus ISO Scene

Road traffic safety ISO Secretary-General management well on track meets key USA The ISO committee develop- stakeholders ing a standard for road traffic The first official visit of the management systems, ISO/PC new ISO Secretary-General, 241, held its second meeting Rob Steele, to ANSI (ISO From left to right, S. Joe Bhatia, ANSI President and CEO ; Rob Steele, ISO in Shah Alam, Malaysia, in member for the USA) took Secretary-General ; and Art Cote, Chairman of the ANSI Board of Directors. February 2009. To coincide place in March 2009. with this event, the Standards and Industrial Research Insti- During his visit Mr. Steele Organized by the Development Members reach record tute of Malaysia (SIRIM) met with ANSI President Joe and Training Services of 160 hosted an international work- Bhatia as well as ANSI board the ISO Central Secretariat shop on road traffic safety. officers, governance leaders (ISO/CS) in Geneva, ISO has achieved a new and members of the manage- Switzerland, in February record membership, which ISO/PC 241 reported progress now comprises the national ment staff. As ISO works to 2009, the ISO Secretaries’ on the number of members standards institutes of 160 develop its strategic plan for Week was the first of its joining the committee, as well kind. countries. as the contribution of a large 2011-2015, Mr. Steele urged number of international ANSI to actively participate in The event aimed to provide Four new “ correspondent ” organizations, including UN helping shape the priorities newly-appointed secretaries members (a category for agencies. for action during the coming from ISO committees and countries that do not yet have years. subcommittees, with a full a fully- The future ISO 39001 will week of intensive training developed provide a holistic approach to Mr. Steele also visited several national US government agencies, focused on a range of topics road traffic safety. This inter- vital to carrying out their standards nationally harmonized tool including the office of the US activity) Trade Representative, the US roles – among them, ISO will be useful for organizations processes and policies, from West Department of Commerce Inter- involved in auditing the effec- electronic tools and the Africa national Trade Administration tiveness of road traffic pro- drafting of International enabled and the US Department of grammes. A first draft will be Standards. ISO to set submitted for enquiry in June Energy. the new 2009, and the result will be The Secretaries’ Week also These meetings offered a valu- record : discussed at the next ISO/PC provided an opportunity to able opportunity to discuss the • Gambia Standards Focal 241 meeting to be held in meet with key contacts at alignment of ISO standards, Point (GAMSFP) Canada, in September 2009. ISO/CS, as well as to net- development directions and work with other secretaries • Liberia Division of Stand- activities with the strategic and and share experiences. ards (LDS) technological priorities of the USA from a number of differ- Participants included secre- • Direction de la Normalisa- ent perspectives. taries from Austria, Canada, tion et de la Promotion de Denmark, France, the Nether- la Qualité (DNPQ) of Mr. Steele also met with staff lands, Norway, Republic of Mauritania from the National Institute of Korea, Sweden and Switzer- • Sierre Leone Standards Standards and Technology and land. Bureau (SLSB). was invited to tour their facilities. Two further Secretaries’ Welcoming the new members, “ International standardization Weeks are planned in 2009. who join a network that cov- Panel at ISO/PC 241’s second is all about people, and I’m Details of how ISO technical meeting, Shah Alam, Malaysia. ers all regions of the world thrilled to be here to meet committee and subcommittee and includes 122 developing Participants were reminded with many of the key stake- secretaries (including their economies, ISO Secretary- of a message from UN Secre- holders from the US standard- support staff) can participate General Rob Steele said : tary-General Ban Ki-moon ization community, ” in future courses may be “ It’s significant that even in urging UN member states and concluded Mr. Steele. found on ISO Online. these times of global financial global road safety partners to The first ISO Secretaries’ Week was crisis, the ISO family is cooperate actively. This First ISO Secretaries’ growing. Week held at the ISO Central Secretariat’s included ISO, which is a headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. member of the UN Road “ The benefits that ISO stand- Safety Collaboration. ards can deliver to business, government and society as a Fruitful exchanges took place whole are increasingly recog- on how ISO member bodies nized. Through membership can help, such as by setting of ISO, countries can contrib- up national mirror committees ute to and influence the stand- to ISO/PC 241 or promoting ards that are most important traffic safety through the to their economies and receive application of the future early warning of forthcoming ISO 39001. standards.”

ISO Focus April 2009 3 © ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus Guest View Reiner Mittelbach

einer Mittelbach is standards, which we do in close Chief Executive cooperation with DIN and other ROfficer of IFRA, the ISO national members. world’s leading association Among the standards for the news publishing with the greatest relevance for industry. He has held this the newspaper industry is the position since November coldset offset standard ISO 2001, when he took over the 12647-3:2005. In fact, the entire helm at IFRA headquarters series of ISO 12647 standards in Darmstadt, Germany, on process control for the pro- including the worldwide duction of half-tone colour network of IFRA affiliates separations, proof and produc- and representatives. tion prints is important, as well Mr. Mittelbach began his as anything related to PDF/X career in 1986 with Unilever, (ISO 15930 series) and the ISO in their packaging group. 2846-2:2007 ink standard. After several positions in Many more standards sales and marketing, he are used on a daily basis in the joined Menshen GmbH & Co newspaper industry. Among KG, another packaging these are standards for ener- company, as their Marketing gy supply, light, buildings, and Sales Director. He first machines, safety and so on. The became involved in the entire list of relevant standards graphic arts industry in 1996 is rather long ! as Sales Director, and then And of course, they Marketing and Sales bring important benefits. A Director at Polar-Mohr, a large German publisher report- cutting systems manufacturer. ed a reduction in the cost of dealing “ Standards are important with complaints by 62.73 % in three Moving to Heidelberger for our industry in order to years following the introduction of the Druckmaschinen AG, he became ISO 12647-3 newspaper printing stand- Speedmaster Sales Director for reduce costs and effort.” ard at his publishing houses. This is a Europe and North America, before remarkable figure. joining the management team of We know from our practical con- Heidelberg’s Finishing business unit Reiner Mittelbach : Whenever possible, sulting work that the application of stand- as Senior Vice President marketing. we promote and also support the development of ISO International Standards. ards can save up to 7.5 % of total pro- Standards are important for the duction cost. Newspaper printing paper newspaper industry in order to reduce (newsprint) can account for up to 50 % ISO Focus : A search for “ISO” on costs and effort. Also – and probably of total production cost. If you do not the IFRA Web site brings up dozens most importantly – standards are help- observe standards that are related to the of references. Can you put a figure ing to improve relations between news- purchasing, storing, handling and print- on the number of ISO standards in paper publishers and their customers. ing of paper and ink, you can easily cre- common use by the sector ? Which In fact, standards assist customer rela- ate excess production costs, as well as are the most utilized ? Just how tions because they clarify expectations the cost of complaints that affect your important are ISO standards for the on both sides. competitiveness. sector ? Has IFRA or its members Since IFRA was founded in 1961, There is no need to reinvent the carried out any cost-benefit studies the articles of the corporation describe wheel, and without standards we would on the use of ISO standards ? that it is a duty to develop and maintain have to do so – every company on its

4 ISO Focus April 2009 © ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus

own. Newspapers act in a global market. Reiner Mittelbach : The level of appre- To be able to print within the tol- They publish advertisements for global ciation of ISO 12647 in the newspaper erances of the newspaper coldset stand- brands aimed at an international mar- industry is very high. We strongly promote ard is the challenge for all participants ket, and the use of worldwide-accepted the use of this standard. IFRA has devel- in IFRA’s quality benchmark competi- standards is the only way to be able to oped and distributed a generic colour pro- tion, the International Newspaper Color do this and to obtain consistent results, file based on it, which has been and con- Quality Club, which is the only global globally and locally. tinues to be downloaded by thousands print quality contest in the newspaper of users worldwide, and is successfully market. ISO Focus : One standard, ISO used by the majority of advertisers and Any newspaper having participat- 12647 (graphic technology, process also for the colour separation of edito- ed with success in this challenging com- control for the production of half- rial pictures. petition, and having been a member of tone colour separations, proof and the International Newspaper Color Qual- production prints) is actually being “ The level of appreciation ity Club for two years, has a powerful used as the principal criterion for argument in its efforts to convince cus- judging entries to IFRA’s 8th Asia of ISO 12647 in tomers, advertisers and readers that its Media Awards, as well as for IFRA’s the newspaper industry newspaper is a consistently high-quali- worldwide-recognized competition is very high.” ty carrier of valuable content. for Club membership in the Inter- Also the IFRA press acceptance test, IFRA training, regional IFRA stand- national Color Quality Club, car- New members of the International ried out at two-year intervals. What Newspaper Color Quality Club with ardization projects, and IFRA consulting does this say about the place of ISO representatives of IFRA and the Newspaper services are based on worldwide-accepted standards in the industry? Association of America in Washington DC, ISO standards. USA (2008).

ISO Focus April 2009 5 © ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus

Worldwide research and services for Guest View the news publishing industry

ISO Focus : Can you describe how With headquarters in Darmstadt, printing standards and – together with IFRA participates within ISO/TC Germany, IFRA has acted as the other associations from Switzerland and Germany – initiated the process towards 130, Graphic technology, in the platform for decision-makers from development of ISO standards that creation of the first international news- the newspaper industry since 1961. are important to its members ? Are paper offset coldset printing standard. there individual members that par- The organization offers its servi- It took about ten years for the standard ticipate in national delegations in ces primarily to its more than 3 100 to be published. addition to IFRA’s presence as a members in nearly 80 countries. liaison organization ? In the cur- A board, comprising publishers as “ We have participated in rent global financial crisis, is there well as central, regional and spe- a temptation to reduce participa- cialized committees drawn from ISO standardization work tion ? IFRA member companies, steers since the 1980s.” the work of the international news- Reiner Mittelbach : We have participated continuously in ISO standardization paper community. Since then, IFRA has been actively promoting practical implementation of work since the second half of the 1980s. IFRA conducts extensive research We contribute in many ways, but mainly ISO 12647-3. We work with national and work, and promotes standardiza- with our technical expertise. One of our regional initiatives to establish standard- experts acts as the main contact person to tion projects, as well as organiz- ized processes. In this way, starting in ISO and all others support her or him in ing international and regional exhi- the year 2000, we have supported quality creating input and solutions for the stand- bitions, conferences, workshops, standardization projects in a number of countries : QUIZ in Germany, KWIK in ardization issues under discussion. study tours, training events, News- the Netherlands, CINCO in Spain, CQ2 plex consulting and interna- in Italy, SINCOL in Croatia, ACER in tional competitions. Latin America and ICONS in India. In addition, we have developed The IFRA Expo – the annual aThe process Alps. standard for semi-commercial event of the news publishing printing, which is heatset or UV drying industry, held at major Euro- in a newspaper offset press. We are also pean venues – is the world’s active in preparing for the next revision most important trade exhi- and improvement of the coldset stand- bition for newspaper com- ard ISO 12647-3, and we monitor the development of ISO soft-proofing and panies and their partners. PDF/X standards. IFRA Expo 2009 will be held from 12 to 15 October in Vienna, Austria. ISO Focus : IFRA has been encour- aging its members to implement IFRA Magazine, the interna- ISO 9001 (quality management sys- Proud members of the International tional magazine of news- tems) since the early 1990s, and Newspaper Color Quality Club 2008–2010 paper business, strategy and many printers also implement ISO (centre) are honoured by Reiner Mittelbach technology, is published in sev- 14001 (environmental management (far left) IFRA and Tom Croteau Newspaper systems). Do you have any figures eral languages in both print and Association of America (far right) at the on the extent of the use of these online versions. IFRA also runs National Press Club in Washington DC, USA standards in the industry ? What (2008). IFRA Search, a vertical search made IFRA such an early supporter engine for the news publishing Representatives from publishing of ISO management systems and houses are not usually active in ISO/TC industry. what benefits have they brought to 130 directly. They like to delegate rep- the sector ? resentation to their associations, which are formed in order to do this job. The Reiner Mittelbach : IFRA has press and equipment manufacturers par- been an early adapter in many ticipate to a certain extent in the work cases. Quite early on, we had of the standardization committees, but are www.ifra.com already observed that quality manage- also mainly represented by their specific ment, safety and environmental protec- associations. www.ifraexpo.com tion – or green publishing, as they say Twenty years ago, IFRA consol- www.ifrasearch.com today – should be combined in an inte- idated all available national newspaper grated approach. www.iframagazine.com 6 ISO Focus April 2009 © ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus

ISO 12647-3 implementation projects

industry. And IFRA is actively helping to turn this wheel round with its research work, regional standardization implementation projects, and with its support of ISO standardization, together with all the other international experts. Standards are important whenever they help reduce costs and effort, improve customer relations and ease or streamline processes. Standardization must never become over-zealous, con- straining innovation and improvement. We always try to observe the borderlines. We can only be successful in standardization through the knowledge and support of our thousands of members. IFRA has initiated and supported a number of regional ISO 12647-3 implementation projects with newspaper groups in different 100 % countries. 90 % Some of the large and mostly Reduction the international publishing houses are 80 % already going this way. We think it will 70 % be even more important in the future to : 62,73% pursue an integrated approach in order 60 % to ensure international competitiveness and acceptance. 50 % Future customers will not only ask for consistently high quality but 40 % also for sustainable products made from sustainable resources and produced in 30 % a healthy environment. You can already see today that book publishers are com- 20 % peting in the use of paper from certified forests. Newspapers have an advantage 10 % here because newsprint can be made 0 % from 100 % recycled paper without quality limitations. 98,26 50,50 26,73 35,53 Implementation of ISO 12647-3 reduced costs of complaints by 62.73 % over 3 years, for a large German publisher. ISO Focus : Does IFRA have a standardization strategy? What developments would you like to see in ISO in Create standards : Implement standards : the future? Given your experience of ISO Associations both ISO technical standards and management-oriented good practice standards, how would you sum up Wheel what ISO and its standards mean to of progress the print industry?

Reiner Mittelbach : Standardization is an integral part of our general approach Develop standards : Improve standards : in the area of newspaper technology. Research Research, ISO For us, as a global newspaper association, research, standards, implementation and improvement are firmly linked IFRA’s research helps in the development of standards ; IFRA’s consulting and training to each other. They form, as we like to implement standards in practice ; real-life experience and user feedback are the basis for point out, a “ wheel of progress ” for our improving standards.

ISO Focus April 2009 7 © ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus Main Focus ISO and the Media

eeting the world’s energy challenges will require intel- Mligent systems to support home applications such as lighting, heating, cooking, learning, entertainment, and of entities used in applications ranging Peer-to-peer support for children, the disabled and from building control and communica- connectivity made the elderly. tions to entertainment and security, as If those systems are to succeed, well as offering specifications to control easy products from multiple industries and and service the home and its appliances competing companies need to work from outside in a way that can be handled together. In the past, industry-specific by the layman (see Figure 1). by Walter P. von Pattay, ISO/IEC standards committees within ISO and the International Electrotechnical Com- JTC 1/SC 25, Interconnection mission (IEC) developed International Plug and play of information technology Standards that supported communication Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) equipment, within certain industries. provides the layman with the means and Stefan Heusinger, Now, the multipart standard ISO/ to establish multivendor and multi- Head of Standardization, DKE IEC 29341, Information technology – technology networks. UPnP defines UPnP Device Architecture, published architecture for pervasive peer-to-peer in 2008, bridges these industries. It network connectivity of networked supports intelligent homes by providing appliances, audio and video equipment, seamless communication for all kinds sensors/actors and PCs of all shapes and

8 ISO Focus April 2009 © ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus ISO and the Media

nications, exploitation of the Internet The entire UPnP framework and simplified network establishment. is described in the ISO/IEC 29341 UPnP achieves this distributed, open series. Part 1 deals with the fundamen- networking architecture by defining tal principles of UPnP and forms its and publishing UPnP device control base architecture. About 70 parts and protocols built upon established, open, subparts define specific applications Internet-based communication standards and devices. For example, audio and such as TCP/IP, UDP, HTTP, XML and video (AV) components are described SOAP (see “ Quick glossary ” box). in Part 3-1 (UPnP AV architecture:1), UPnP lies below layer 6 of the Part 3-10 (transport:1 service), Part 4-4 Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) (data structure template:1), and Part reference model, and is used for auto- 4-10 (transport:2 service). matic device management in a TCP/IP network, which is the type of network where devices and services capable of UPnP can be found. Figure 2 (overleaf) Quick glossary shows the context of UPnP. DHCP – Dynamic host configuration protocol Zero-configuration DNS – Domain name service networking HTTP – Hypertext transfer UPnP architecture supports protocol zero-configuration networking. A UPnP- OSI – Open systems compatible device from any vendor can interconnection dynamically join a network, obtain an IP address, announce its name, convey SOAP – Simple object access its capabilities upon request, and learn protocol about the presence and capabilities of TCP/IP – Transmission control other devices (see Box overleaf). protocol/Internet protocol Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and Domain Name UDP – User datagram protocol Service (DNS) servers are optional and UPnP – Universal plug and play are only used if they are available on XML – Extensible markup the network. Devices can leave the net- language work automatically without leaving any unwanted state information behind.

UPnP connects internal and external entities

Services and content Entities connected to the home networks

WAN for sizes whether they use wire or wireless Remote distribution transmission. It is designed to bring controls easy-to-use, flexible, standards-based and two way connectivity to ad hoc or unmanaged communications networks whether in the home, small business or in public spaces. The goals of UPnP are to allow devices to connect seamlessly and to ease multiple applications like entertain- Figure 1 – UPnP ment, energy efficiency and building connects internal and control through data sharing, commu- external entities.

Second Home ISO Focus April 2009 9 © ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus

Main Focus

When devices join a network specific Web sites. The description also includes a list of embedded devices or services, as well as The following steps must be performed upon joining a URLs for control, “ eventing ”, and presentation. network : For each service, the description includes a list of • Addressing : When first connected to the network, each the commands to which the service responds, and device must have a DHCP client and search for a DHCP parameters for each action. server. If no DHCP server is available (unmanaged • C o n t r o l : Having retrieved the device’s description, network) the device must assign itself an address. If the control point sends a suitable message to the the device obtains a domain name during the DHCP control URL for the service. Control messages are transaction, it should use that name in subsequent also expressed in XML. Much like function calls, network operations; otherwise, it should use its IP the service returns any action-specific values in address. response to the control message. • Discovery : After obtaining the IP address, the device • Event notification (“ eventing ”) : A UPnP description communicates its capabilities and services to control for a service includes a list of actions that the points on the network through the UPnP discovery service responds to and a list of variables that protocol. Similarly, when a control point is added to the model the state of the service when it is run. The network, the UPnP discovery protocol allows that control service publishes updates when these variables point to search for devices of interest on the network. change, and a control point may subscribe to The fundamental exchange in both cases is a discovery receive this information. The service publishes message containing a few essential specifics about updates by sending event messages, which contain the device or one of its services, for example, its type, the names of one or more state variables, and their identifier, and a pointer to more detailed information. current values. To support scenarios with multiple • Description : After a control point has discovered a new control points, eventing is designed to keep all device, information about it is very limited. However, control points equally informed about the effects of more comprehensive information can be retrieved any action. through the pointer provided by the device in the • Presentation : If a device has a URL for discovery message. The UPnP description for a device presentation, the control point can display the is expressed in XML and includes vendor-specific relevant page in order to allow a user to control information such as model name and number, serial the device and/or view its status, according to the number, manufacturer’s name, and URLs to vendor- specific capabilities available.

Yesterday, today and Applications tomorrow Together with other International Standards – such as the multipart stand- Management interfaces ards ISO/IEC 14543-3-x and ISO/IEC 14543-4-x on home electronic systems architecture communication layers – ISO/ IEC 29341 provides specifications to Plug and play extensions support a wide variety of applications that yesterday belonged to the realm of fantasy. Today, in the real world, Function

UPnP discovery they include : Network map

Wireless setup • Archive photos, music and films on

Quality of service the PC or media centre and then watch IP network IPv4 / IPv6 or listen to them on the home theatre, TV, audio system, PC or mobile phone, anywhere in the world Ethernet / Wireless • See a visitor ringing at your door on your TV set, PC or mobile phone, Figure 2 – UPnP within the network. whether you are at home or away

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• Operate your home appliances, heat- ISO ing and lights using the TV set and its and the remote control, the PC or mobile phone from within or outside your home Media • Let the music follow you as you move about your house • Create the illusion that your home is occupied by having lights go on and off and shutters move up and down • Get an alert when your elderly mother falls at her house or does not move during a defined period of time • Switch off heating and air condition- ing as soon as a window is opened, and switch them on remotely before returning home • Watch your pet on the PC or mobile phone while you are away, and fill the food dish by remote control.

Who says tomorrow never comes !

About the authorauthors

Dr.-Ing. Walter P. von Pattay has served on ISO/IEC JTC 1/ SC 25 since 1983, joining the committee while he worked The Co-Chairs and members of MPEG’s video subgroup and the JVT at the NATAS Emmy award with Siemens. ceremony in January 2009, with the paired awards presented to ISO/IEC MPEG and ITU-T VCEG : In 1993, he (from left) Jens-Rainer Ohm, Gary J. Sullivan, Thomas Wiegand and Ajay Luthra. obtained a Ph.D. Photo credit : Marc Bryan-Brown Photography. based on his research into dissemination and market acceptance of networked systems and international standardization. In 2002, he was granted the DIN prize “Benefits of Standardization”. leading edge of defining digital media Having retired from Siemens, he is con- And the Emmy standards for consumer and profession- tinuing his engagement in standardiza- al applications. tion using the findings of his thesis. goes to … With filename extensions like The MPEG story .mp3, .mpg, and .mp4 in everyday Stefan use, and MPEG features advertised Heusinger has for equipment in every consumer elec- long-serving by Jens-Rainer Ohm and Gary J. tronics shop, it can be said that most professional Sullivan, Co-Chairs of the Video people in the world know the acronym experience in sub-group of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC “ MPEG ” better than they know the the fields of 29/WG 11, Coding of moving meaning behind it. control engineering and pictures and audio numerically Tremendous market he ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts controlled adoption machine tools, Group, or MPEG as it is most as well as in software development. In commonly known, recently cele- The most recent MPEG video T th 2006, he became Technical Manager brated its 20 anniversary. Part of joint coding standard – MPEG-4 Advanced Standards within the DKE – the German technical committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, video coding (AVC) – has been the sub- Commission for Electrical, Electronic & Information technology, subcommittee ject of especially newsworthy events. Information Technologies of DIN and SC 29, Coding of audio, picture, mul- Embodied in the International Stand- VDE. Since 2008 he is Head of the timedia and hypermedia information, ard ISO/IEC 14496-10, and the Inter- Department of Standardization. it has, since the beginning, been at the national Telecommunication Union

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(ITU)-T Recommendation H.264, the the technical excellence of the stand- It is very clear that the demand AVC standard is the most advanced ard. The JVT partnership with ITU-T for video applications with higher res- video compression standard of today. VCEG is a compelling example of ISO/ olution and higher quality is continu- There is no doubt that it has found tre- IEC MPEG’s collaboration with other ally increasing. Technology evolution mendous market adoption since being organizations for international stand- will soon make possible the capture and first defined in 2003. ardization work. display of video material with a quan- The AVC standard was designed tum leap forward in quality (increasing in a collaborative team known as the the spatial resolution, frame rate, colour Joint Video Team (JVT), made up of “ Most people in the world fidelity and amplitude precision). experts from the ISO/IEC Moving Pic- know the acronym ‘MPEG’ The next generation of ultra-HD tures Experts Group and the ITU-T Video (UHD) contents and devices, such as Coding Experts Group (VCEG). It has better than they know the the very high resolution “4Kx2K” dis- already found widespread application in, meaning behind it.” plays for home cinema applications and for example, high definition (HD) disc digital cameras, are already appearing storage (such as Blu-ray disc), broadcast on the horizon. Lightweight HD reso- Further, these recent awards add (DVB-x2), camera capture (AVCHD), lutions such as 720p 2) or even beyond to a previous Emmy awarded in 1996 mobile devices (such as 3GPP multi- will be introduced in the mobile appli- for the development of the MPEG-1, media phones) and hand-held video cations sector. MPEG-2, and JPEG standards (com- players (such as the iPod), videocon- pression coding associated with still ferencing systems, and video services photography, video CD, MP3, digital “ The importance of the on the Internet (such as Adobe’s Flash, TV and DVD). Apple’s QuickTime, Google’s YouTube AVC standard is reflected and Gmail video chat). by two Emmy awards.” The next chapter Recently, new amendments to However, even cable networks “ High profile ” awards AVC were defined that extend the design are already finding it difficult to carry The importance of the AVC to support highly efficient scalable vid- large quantities of HD resolution video standard is reflected by two Emmy eo coding (SVC) and multi-view vid- economically to end users. Further data awards that were recently received for eo coding (MVC). SVC adds the capa- rate increases will put still more pres- its development : bility to decode video of various spa- sure on delivery networks. A new gen- A 2008 Primetime Emmy Engi- tial, temporal and quality resolutions eration of video compression technol- neering Award was given to JVT. The from subsets of the same encoded data ogy – one that has sufficiently higher Academy of Television Arts and Sci- stream, while MVC enables efficient ences acclaimed the development of the joint compression of multiple cameras 1) International Consumer Electronics Show, AVC “ high profile ” – which has extend- capturing the same scene from differ- organized annually by the Consumer Electronics ed the reach of high quality video from ent perspectives for applications such Association, USA. mobile telephones right through to high as 3-D video. definition television (HDTV) – as being 2) Progressive scan display with vertical resolution of 720 pixels, among the “ developments in engineering that are either so extensive an improvement on existing methods or so innovative in nature that they materially affect About the authors the transmission, recording or reception Jens-Rainer Dr. Sullivan is of television ”. The award was presented Ohm and Gary also the Rap- to the JVT at a ceremony in Hollywood in J. Sullivan are porteur of the Los Angeles, USA, in August 2008. Co-Chairs of ITU-T Video The Primetime Emmy was followed MPEG’s video Coding Experts a few months later by 2007-2008 Technol- sub-group with- Group (VCEG), ogy and Engineering Emmy Awards for in ISO/IEC JTC and is a video/ both ISO/IEC MPEG and ITU-T VCEG, 1/SC 29’s work- image technolo- by the US National Academy of Television ing group WG gy architect at Arts and Sciences (NATAS). The award 11, Coding of Microsoft Cor- ceremony was held as part of the Inter- moving pictures poration. national CES 1) trade show in Las Vegas, and audio, and the Joint Video Team (JVT). USA, in January 2009. Professor Ohm holds the Chair position It is unprecedented that a tech- at the Institute for Communications nology receives both types of engineer- Engineering at RWTH Aachen Universi- ing Emmy awards – an indication of ty, Germany.

12 ISO Focus April 2009 © ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus ISO and the Media

compression capability than the existing AVC standard in its best consumer Behind the application configuration (the “ high profile ”) – is fast becoming needed. scenes of A new study has recently begun the global film on the feasibility of developing such a high-performance video coding (HVC) industry standard, marking the beginning of the next chapter in the story of MPEG’s video technology innovation.

Moving to a new vision One of the first cinematographic achievements : Lumiere’s Another important tendency with “ Arrival of a train at La Ciotat Station” (1895). an urgent need for new standardization efforts is the emergence of 3-D services and devices. Beyond conventional stereo (with simple encoding of left and right by Julian Pinn, Chair, eye video frame views), an advanced user ISO/TC 36, Cinematography experience without viewing fatigue will t is a small world – well, thanks to require adjustment of the depth percep- equipment; in laboratory work ; and in standardization it is – and the film tion depending on viewing preferences, standards relating to sound and picture industry is an excellent example of a display type, size and positioning. High I films used in television. global industry that has managed to keep quality auto-stereoscopic displays are It is quite a scope and since its its world very small indeed. expected to enter the consumer market inception in 1947, ISO/TC 36 has pub- Standards play a crucial part within the next few years. lished in excess of 100 standards that throughout the numerous stages of the Since it is difficult to directly have removed and are expected to con- complex, and often international, motion provide all the necessary information tinue to remove technical barriers to picture supply chain. A film can be for an immersive viewing experience trade, and to enable open markets in shot in one country, edited in another, due to constraints in capture, production various regions of the world. sound mixed in yet another, and then and transmission technologies, a new the masterpiece exhibited in many of format is needed to enable the genera- the 140 000-or-so cinema screens world- tion of many high-quality views from a wide with no technical need for local limited amount of input data. MPEG’s conversion whatsoever. vision is a new 3-D video (3DV) for- And this is very important : whilst mat to enable both advanced stereo- there is invariably nothing more pre- scopic display processing and improved cious to film-makers than the integrity support for auto-stereoscopic N-view by which their artistry is exhibited, it is (multi) displays, as well as interoper- the producers and distributors who are able 3-D services. particularly interested in minimizing the MPEG’s video compression work costs in achieving this! Standards play a has not come to an end with the devel- crucial part in minimizing these costs; opment of the AVC standard. In fact, to Loudspeakers behind the screen. moreover, standards play a crucial part satisfy the expanding needs of its broad (Photo from Bell Theatre Services of Empire Leicester in maximizing that artistic integrity by constituency and to explore new opportu- Square). specifying performance characteristics nities for additional applications, MPEG of the numerous systems and materials Cinematography standards in will continue developing new standards used in the total supply chain from pro- general do not address social, safe- into the foreseeable future. duction through to exhibition. ty, health or environmental concerns ; ISO/TC 36, Cinematography, is there are no laws mandating the adop- all about the standardization of definition of cinema standards. Standardiza- tions, dimensions, methods of measure- tion of the world’s film industry has to ment and test, and performance charac- be sensitive and relevant to the mar- teristics relating to materials and appa- ket needs of the industry it is aiming ratus used in silent and sound motion to support. Irrelevant work will sim- picture photography ; in sound record- ply be ignored. ing and reproduction related thereto ; With over 100 years since the in the installation and characteristics Lumière brothers were filming that won- of projection and sound reproduction derful steam train at La Ciotat station,

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20th plenary of ISO/TC 36, market forces and international standard- Seoul, Republic of Korea. recognizing the technical, commercial, ization have managed to weave together and political requirements for many of in order to help make a global industry the industry’s stakeholders, is a mas- of phenomenal maturity. sive undertaking. In October 1999, the With much of the gamut of film Task Force on Digital Cinema (St13.18) standards finished, modern standards About the author of the Society of Motion Picture and work, until recently, has been largely Television Engineers (SMPTE) met for limited to just maintenance. Market Julian Pinn the first time. This task force evolved forces, however, have changed gear and is Chair of into DC28 in November 1999 when the the motion picture industry is witness- ISO/TC 36, task force was approved for conversion ing, arguably, the biggest change since Cinematogra- into the Committee on Digital Cinema the introduction of sound many decades phy, and is Technology. DC28 has welcomed a large ago: finally, a digital alternative to shin- business devel- international membership and partici- ing light through reels of sequential opment manag- pation of the standardization process film images is available. And it is up er for Dolby of this global industry. to the work of key market stakeholders Laboratories and standardization to help make sure Inc. based in the this alternative, digital cinema offers United King- “ Standards play a the same high level of interoperabil- dom. He holds a Masters degree in crucial part throughout ity and artistic integrity as its photo- business administration from the Open the numerous stages of chemical predecessor: film. University and a Bachelor’s honours ISO/TC 36 is consequently very degree in music and sound recording the complex, and often busy again. Since the concept of digital from the Tonmeister programme of the international, motion cinema as a viable alternative to film University of Surrey. Alongside his has gathered general acceptance, there audio consultation on numerous picture supply chain.” motion picture releases and, later, has been, and still is – a real need for a the development of businesses within very speedy reaction in standards work With speed of the essence, since the sector of cinema entertainment to this industry-change. Mass adoption its 19th plenary meeting held in Los technology and services, he has made of different non-standardized equipment significant contribution to the mainte- Angeles, USA, at the end of 2006 and th and material specifications will result nance and development of cinemato- during its 20 plenary meeting held in in a very fragmented industry that will graphic standards both at national and Seoul, Republic of Korea, in May 2008, not enjoy the same open and easy inter- at international levels. He is a member ISO/TC 36 has published twelve digital change of material as is enjoyed with of SMPTE, the British Kinematograph cinema standards – and there is another film. The cost of this lack of standard- Sound and Television Society, and is large batch of eleven standards currently ization would be very dear. the current chair of the British Stan- on target for publication next year ! Considering the suitable direc- dards Institution technical committee This phenomenal work is part- tion of an industry being reborn, whilst on cinematography. due to the hard work of ISO/TC 36’s

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nine participating member countries Digital photography has not in their conscientious consideration of JPEG – replaced traditional chemical photogra- each and every work item that make up phy, but rather given photographers new the entire suite of interconnecting dig- Still photography creative tools and many new modes of ital cinema standards, and part due to brought to life printing. It has also contributed to the the enormous dedication of the salient progress of e-commerce, where digital contributor of that work, the SMPTE, images of products and services offer which, for cinematography stand- new merchandising opportunities. ardization, represents the American by Daniel T. Lee, Convenor, One enabler of this phenome- National Standards Institute (ANSI) : ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 1, non is the availability of powerful and one of the nine national members of Coding of still pictures inexpensive digital cameras. Less vis- ISO/TC 36. ible to consumers, but nonetheless key, ISO/TC 36 is divided into four haring photographs over the Inter- is the JPEG imaging standard – a joint working groups, each with their own net has become one of the most project between ISO and the Interna- area of expertise. These are : Sinteresting modes of social inter- tional Telecommunication Union’s Tel- ecommunication Standardization Sec- • ISO/TC 36/WG 1, Production tech- action since the advent of modern dig- tor (ITU-T). The JPEG standard, ISO/ nology : the process, mechanisms and ital media. IEC 10918-1 or ITU-T recommendation materials used to capture images and Millions of images are shared T.81, giving requirements and guide- sound for cinematographic use and every day among friends and family in preparation of such content ready e-mails, photo-hosting Web sites and lines for digital compression and cod- for packaging and distribution the enormously popular social networking of continuous-tone still images, was ing sites, like MySpace, Facebook and approved in 1992. • ISO/TC 36/WG 2, Laboratory and Flickr, where users can even instantly distribution services technology : the upload photos taken with their process, mechanisms and materials mobile phone cameras. Digital used to manufacture, package and photos are also widely printed distribute cinematographic materi- at home or through commercial als ready for theatrical presentation printing services. and submittal for television distribution

• ISO/TC 36/WG 3, Audio technology : the process, mechanisms and materials used to capture, prepare, distribute and present audio for accompaniment of cinematographic images

• ISO/TC 36/WG 4, Presentation technology : the process, mechanisms and materials used to present cinematographic materials in a theatrical environment.

So next time you are at the cinema, have a thought about the sheer number of personnel on the end-cred- its, in front of and behind the scenes and how they all worked together to produce that film. Then have a think about the hundreds of personnel and thousands and thousands of man-hours that have gone into the standards that ensure the cinema is able to present that film and to an audience who are on the edge of their seats–just as the director intended.

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Recipe for success JPEG 2000 makes use of sev- JPEG 2000 provides a rich set eral advances in compression technol- of technology. Since its publication, The Joint Photographic Experts ogy (including wavelets transform) to the standard has been successful in Group – also known as the JPEG com- deliver superior compression and sys- areas such as digital cinemas, security mittee – is the name used for working tems performance, providing many applications, video surveillance, defence group WG 1, Coding of still pictures, advanced features in scalability, flex- imaging, remote sensing, medical imag- under ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29, Coding of ibility and systems functionalities that ing, digital culture imaging, broadcast audio, picture, multimedia and hyper- outperform its predecessor. applications and 3D graphics. The work media information. The “J” in JPEG After publication of the first six of JPEG 2000 is continuing with tech- refers to the joint development work parts of the JPEG 2000 standards, which nology maintenance, and work on a between ISO and ITU-T. included the core, extensions, motion, new part to address the XML interface The baseline technology was conformance, reference software and to JPEG 2000 objects. based on a simple, efficient 8 X 8 dis- multi-layer compound image file format, crete cosine transform compression algo- the JPEG committee began investigating rithm that uses Huffman coding, oper- four important application areas. The ated in sequential mode and restricted Misplaced image ? resulting four parts addressed security to 8 bits per pixel input. (JPSEC), interactive protocol (JPIP), While advances have been made Besides its technical merits, the multi-dimensional datasets (JP3D) and on many fronts in Internet search engine success enjoyed by JPEG can be attrib- wireless applications (JPWL). technology, the area of image search has uted to the availability of free and effi- met some limitations. cient software developed by independ- When entering a key word in a ent groups, such as the Independent “ JPEG 2000 makes typical search engine, users will often JPEG Group. Part of its success was use of several advances find the results unsatisfactory, either also due to the introduction of the JPEG in compression technology because the wrong image is retrieved file interchange format (JFIF), and lat- or the desired context is not accurate- er the exchangeable image file format to deliver superior ly interpreted. (EXIF) that make the popular file exten- compression and systems These limitations are partly due sion .jpg synonymous with JPEG com- performance.” to lack of standardization in the fol- pressed images. lowing areas : Since the publication of the JPEG standard, the JPEG committee has con- • Ability to reuse metadata (lack of tinued to work to deliver innovative interoperability of metadata) imaging standards that can serve new About the author requirements, using the most advanced • A common query format and search technology from research in the imag- Daniel T. Lee semantics for image search ing field. (BS Cornell, MS PhD • A common format for handling con- Stanford) is a text in image search. A new generation – seasoned tech- Other aspects that need to be JPEG 2000 nology executive with more addressed include how metadata can A number of imaging applications than 25 years of be created, modified and stored, and were not addressed when the original experience in also how image collections can have JPEG standard was published. These the high tech metadata different from that of a sin- include high resolution imagery, digital industry. He is gle image. The JPEG committee there- libraries, cultural archives, high fidel- the General Manager of eBay Global fore started a new work item to address ity colour imaging, wireless, medical Development Centers. Prior to eBay, he these problems. imaging and digital cinemas. was the Chief Technology Officer of Organized into five parts, Part 1 All these applications require Yahoo! Asia. Before that he was with of ISO/IEC 24800, Information technol- Hewlett Packard, where he held a enhanced functionality from a com- ogy – JPSearch, was published in 2007. number of management positions in pression standard, which JPEG does It provides a framework for interopera- Imaging Technology. He also worked at not satisfy due to design points that Advanced Telecommunications Research bility for still image search and retriev- were beyond its scope when it was (ATR) in Japan and at IBM Research. In al, specifying two related items. developed. The committee therefore standardization, he serves as Convenor The first is a framework for started a new work item to address of the JPEG standards committee, ISO/ interoperability for still image search these issues, resulting in the JPEG IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 1, Coding of still and retrieval. The second identifies the 2000 family of standards – the ISO/ pictures, a position he has held since architecture and the components in this IEC 15444 series (JPEG 2000 image 1996. framework, the linkages between com- coding system). E-mail: [email protected] ponents, and which of these compo-

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nents and links are to be standardized The ultimate goal is to maintain in JPSearch. full image fidelity and precision and The image search and retriev- avoid intermediate data corruption due al framework is determined by actual to insufficient dynamic range represen- use cases, leveraging the experience of tation of image data in high-dynamic text retrieval where, for example, dif- range imagery settings. ferent users issuing the same query may JPEG XR is designed to optimize be looking for different results. The image quality and compression efficien- JPSearch framework is general enough cy while also enabling low-complexity to support many possible approaches to encoding and decoding implementations. image retrieval, e.g., from using only ISO/IEC 29199, Part 2, giving the spec- low-level image features, to text anno- ification of JPEG XR, is expected to be tations, to community input, or a mix- published sometime this year. ture of such approaches. The other parts, which are still under development, will be: Triumph of innovation and teamwork • Part 2 : Registration, identification, and management of schema and The JPEG committee is proud ontology of the success of the imaging standards it has developed over the past 20 • Part 3 : JPSearch query format years. The JPEG standard is used every day by millions of people to share and • Part 4 : File format for metadata print digital photos. The adoption of embedded in image data (JPEG and JPEG 2000 in a wide variety of imag- JPEG 2000) ing applications is a mark of its suc- • Part 5: Data interchange format cess. The work of JPSearch will propel between image repositories. growth in image search and retrieval systems, and JPEG XR will address the need for high-dynamic-range imagery Full image fidelity still to come. The latest work item initiated by the JPEG committee is the JPEG XR “The JPEG standard standard, ISO/IEC 29199 (JPEG XR is used every day image coding system), also in five parts. The overall goal of JPEG XR is to sup- by millions of people to port a wide range of colour encoding for- share and print digital mats, especially in high-dynamic-range imagery settings, where the associated photos.” numerical range, colour fidelity, colour gamut and precision are maintained The JPEG family of imaging using a variety of fixed and floating- standards is indeed a triumph of inno- point numerical representations. vation and teamwork. Under the inter- JPEG XR addresses the needs of national standardization process, the high-dynamic-range applications that are best minds in image coding technology beyond the common usage of standard gather from all over the world in a con- baseline JPEG, which uses 8-bit repre- sensus-driven process to develop com- sentation. It supports a variety of col- prehensive image coding systems. our profiled pixel formats using integer representations in bit depths of 8 to 16, while maintaining full compatibility with existing legacy devices. In addition, JPEG XR supports a number of advanced pixel formats to avoid some of the limitations and complexities that result when convert- ing between different, range-limited, unsigned integer representations.

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Main Focus

Drawing with light – From chemicals to pixels

by Jack Holm, Convenor of ISO/TC 42/JWG 20, Joint ISO/TC 42- IEC WG : Digital still cameras

hotography is core to our life experience. Photographs enable Pus to communicate and preserve aspects of life, as a complement to language. Digital photography is funda- mentally different from chemical photography. Capabilities are varied, user expectations are consequently evolving, and the core metrics and techniques that served photography for over a century no longer always apply. Today, few have the time to devote to the leisurely exploration of “ ISO 12234-1 has been Universally adopted a hobby, and prefer the convenience of One of the original concerns digital photography. On the commercial almost universally adopted with digital photography was the like- side, digital offers many opportunities, by the digital camera lihood that, without some form of but business models can be difficult to industry, enabling the standardization, different digital cam- develop and time spent dealing with eras would write different file formats countless variables can increase over- broad interoperability users that would then be unreadable by other head and customer confusion. experience today.” cameras and devices such as comput- In the early 1990s, ISO/TC 42, ers and printers, at least without spe- Photography, recognized both the possi- is nearly impossible when, unknown to cial software. bilities and the challenges of the impend- each other, the parties involved are talk- ISO 12234-1:2007, Electronic ing transition of photography to digit- ing about different things. Communicat- still-picture imaging – Removable mem- al, and initiated work in several areas : ing the value of new features to poten- ory – Part 1 : Basic removable-memory vocabulary, speed and resolution metrics, tial customers can also be difficult when model, specifies the media format, direc- and removable media. These efforts rec- there is no way to describe the feature tory structure and file formats (JPEG/ ognized that while photography would in understandable terms. EXIF and TIFF) to be used on digital likely remain core to the modern human While an ISO vocabulary stand- camera removable media, along with experience, the technology on which it ard is unlikely to reach the mass mar- an extensive list of camera character- is based was about to undergo a radical ket, it can enable reliable communication ization and image annotation metada- transformation. within the industry, which will in turn ta. This standard has been almost uni- lead to more consistent product behav- versally adopted by the digital camera iour and interfaces. industry, enabling the broad interop-

“What’s in a word…” To address this need, ISO 12231: erability that users experience today. Whenever a new technology 2005, Photography – Electronic still pic- Moving forward, work is in progress area emerges, one obstacle to progress ture imaging – Vocabulary, contains over on a revision of a second part, ISO is inconsistent terminology. Different 200 digital photography terms and defi- 12234-2:2001, Part 2 : TIFF/EP image terms may have the same meaning, or nitions, explaining, for example, the dif- data format, intended to bring increased the same term may be used with differ- ferences between “ aliasing ” and “ aspect capabilities, interoperability and lon- ent meanings, resulting in communica- ratios ”, “ colour spaces ” and “ colour gevity to camera raw formats (unproc- tion breakdowns. Building consensus encodings ”. essed image data).

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Another key standard, ISO specific illumination conditions while Digital speed 15740:2008, Photography – Electron- digital cameras can be white balanced An example of a case where the ic still picture imaging – Picture trans- to perform correctly under a wide vari- move to digital has required some fun- fer protocol (PTP) for digital still pho- ety of illumination. In the case of cam- damental rethinking is the development tography devices, made it possible to era raw (unprocessed image), white bal- of ISO 12232:2006, Photography – Dig- connect cameras directly to printers for ancing can even be performed after the ital still cameras – Determination of “ computer free ” digital photography. picture has been taken. exposure index, “ISO speed ratings”, This was considered essential for broad In chemical photography, the standard output sensitivity, and recom- consumer use. complex handling of colour is incor- mended exposure index. porated into the film. In digital imag- The purpose of the “ ISO speed ing, the need for appropriate colour rating ” 1) is to specify the amount of A taste of colour management is sometimes neglected, exposure required to produce the best Colour is one of the most com- resulting in unsatisfactory results. Col- quality images. With film capture, this plex and difficult aspects in both chem- our standards are essential in address- is relatively straightforward – if the ical and digital photography, and this ing this problem, and are developed in exposure is incorrect the image formed fact is somewhat counterintuitive. The several forums. ISO/TC 42 takes the on the film will be either too dark or human visual system does such an excel- lead on digital photography specific too light. Years of experience with this lent job of perceiving colour that most standards, and collaborates on more paradigm have led to a strong correla- people think of colour as a physical char- general efforts. tion in users’ minds between exposure acteristic of objects like weight, rather Colour standards developed by and darkness/lightness. than a perception more akin to taste. It ISO/TC 42 include : With digital photography, this is important to remember that our abil- • ISO 17321-1:2006, Graphic technol- correlation no longer applies, because ity to perceive colours reliably is possi- ogy and photography – Colour char- it is a simple matter to adjust the dark- ble because a major part of our brain is acterisation of digital still cameras ness or lightness digitally. Some cam- devoted to this task. (DSCs) – Part 1: Stimuli, metrology eras do this automatically, and in cam- On the positive side, digital colour and test procedures era raw processing applications, the user reproduction is very flexible. For exam- can make adjustments after the picture ple, photographic films are designed for • ISO 22028-1:2004, Photography and graphic technology – Extended col- is taken. The film exposure mindset is our encodings for digital image stor- actually a hindrance to the best use of age, manipulation and interchange digital capture. About the author – Part 1: Architecture and requirements Jack Holm is “ The picture transfer the President • ISO/TS 22028-2:2006, Photography protocol (PTP) made and Chief Tech- and graphic technology – Extended nical Officer of colour encodings for digital image it possible to connect Tarkus Imaging, storage, manipulation and interchange cameras directly to printers a San Jose, – Part 2: Reference output medium California, metric RGB colour image encoding for ‘computer free’ digital USA, startup (ROMM RGB) photography.” engaged in digi- • ISO/TS 22028-3:2006, Photography tal photography and graphic technology – Extended technology This raises the question of how to colour encodings for digital image development and licensing, consulting, determine “ ISO speed ratings ” for dig- storage, manipulation and inter- and test and measurement. He is Convenor ital cameras. The fundamental answer change – Part 3 : Reference input of ISO/TC 42/WG 20, Joint ISO/TC 42- comes from looking at the quality deg- medium metric RGB colour image IEC WG : Digital still cameras, ISO/TC radations that occur as the exposure is encoding (RIMM RGB). 42/WG 23, Joint ISO/TC 42-ISO/TC changed – too much exposure results 130-CIE WG : Extended colour encodings The RIMM and ROMM RGB in clipping, too little exposure results for digital image storage, manipulation in noise, and a range of exposures may and interchange, and ISO/TC 42/WG 24, encoding standards are widely used in high-end photographic applications. produce acceptable results. Joint ISO/TC 42-ISO/TC 130 WG : Consequently, ISO 12232 speci- Revision of ISO 3664:2000. He is also Colour encoding standards are fies the “ ISO speed rating ” which cor- Secretary of IEC/TC 100/TA 2, Colour particularly important in digital imaging responds to the minimum exposure that measurement and management. Former- because otherwise there is no defined will produce the best quality, avoiding ly, Mr. Holm was a Principal Scientist in relationship between the numbers in a the Office of Strategy and Technology at digital file and the colours a viewer is Hewlett Packard, and a Professor at the expected to see in an image. 1) “ISO speed rating” refers to speed rating in Rochester Institute of Technology, USA. accordance with ISO standards.

ISO Focus April 2009 19 © ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus

Main Focus

excessive clipping and noise, as well as Speed – A vital gauge an “ ISO speed latitude ”, specifying the range of exposures that can be expected The speed with which output to produce acceptable results. pages can be printed is a vital gauge of In the case of ISO 12232, the printer or copier performance, making industry has yet to fully adopt the standards indispensable for productiv- standard, due to concerns about user ity measurement methods. expectations for film-like behaviour. Two such standards developed Hopefully the increasing popularity of by subcommittee SC 28 have been camera raw will gradually result in re- available for almost a decade. These education and a new paradigm. If this are ISO/IEC 14545:1998 for copying happens, the standard will have been machines and ISO/IEC 10561:1999 for partly responsible for opening up the low-end printers. However, both these new possibilities. standards are designed for black-and- white analogue machines, and do not take into account job streams and oth- Addressing industry er key factors that may influence the needs measured throughput rate. To fill the gap, SC 28 has devot- ISO/TC 42 has also developed ed several years of effort to develop- a number of other metrics standards, ing new standards providing methods such as ISO 12233:2000 for digital for measuring productivity for digit- camera resolution measurements, ISO al printing (ISO/IEC 24734:2009) and 14524:2009 for opto-electronic con- digital copying (ISO/IEC 24735:2009). version function measurements, ISO Both just published, the two standards 15739:2003 for digital camera noise were developed in parallel with mini- and dynamic range measurements, and mal deviation from one another. ISO 16067-1:2003, ISO 16067-2:2004 Comparing apples and ISO 21550:2004 for scanner OECF, resolution, noise and dynamic range with apples – How many pages to measurements. The ISO 20462 series Helping you make a cartridge ? specifies methods for the subjective evaluation of image quality (Psycho- the right choice An important concern among physical experimental methods for esti- users, which emerged about a decade mating image quality). ago due mainly to the significant cost of In addition, ISO/TC 42 main- cartridges, is the difficulty in estimat- tains a large body of chemical photogra- by Akira Saito, Chair ing cost per printed page when using phy standards and continues to develop of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 28, a particular model of printer. Identify- standards for image permanence, from ing this market need, SC 28 began to chemical photography media to inkjet Office equipment develop a method for measuring yields for printer cartridges in 2001. prints to digital discs. mong the various subcommit- This project, initially cover- tees of the joint technical coming monochrome toner cartridges for mittee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Informa- Moving forward A electro-photographic (laser) printers, tion technology, the most product-ori- ISO/TC 42 will continue to sup- ented is subcommittee SC 28, Office was later extended to colour toner and port the photography industry and its equipment. ink cartridges for inkjet printers. Fig- customers, providing standards to meet One of the subcommittee’s tacit ure 1 shows the collection of standards immediate needs as well as forward- missions is to promote fair trade in the in this area, including projects under looking standards to help the world office equipment market. Specifically, development. capture the human experience with new ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 28 serves manufac- technologies. turers by standardizing the frameworks A question of image and processes which they use to evaluate the design, performance and quality quality of their products, in exactly the same How do you evaluate the printed manner as their competitors do. As a quality of an image when the original result, users are given an opportunity is a computer document and there is no to make informed apple-to-apple com- hardcopy original for comparison ? parisons of products in their purchase ISO/IEC 13660:2001, Infor- decisions. mation technology – Office equip-

20 ISO Focus April 2009 © ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus ISO and the Media ment – Measurement of image quality Squaring up to new bility guidelines for elderly persons and attributes for hardcopy output – Binary issues persons with disabilities, was published. monochrome text and graphic images, The standard’s guidelines are intend- was developed to address the question. In addition to product performed to facilitate evaluation of equipment This standard defines attributes such ance and quality, market demand has for operation by persons with the wid- as graininess, mottle, blur and ragged- been evolving in recent years to include est range of capabilities, including per- ness, as well as appropriate measure- environmental and other concerns, and sons with disabilities, whether perma- ment methods. the subcommittee has adapted accord- nent or temporary. The subcommittee is currently ingly. working on a revision of ISO/IEC 13660, Today, environment-conscious “Users can make to be published as ISO/IEC 24790. The design of office equipment is becom- draft incorporates recognized improve- ing increasingly important for a sus- informed apple-to-apple ments in measurement algorithms, adds tainable society. Recognizing that SC comparisons of products the “ banding ” attribute to quantify an 28 should squarely address environment additional class of image defects, and issues relating to office equipment, the in their purchase explicitly separates psychological fac- subcommittee has developed : decisions.” tors from physical measures in the evaluation of hardcopy images.

An obvious problem Comparison of products at a shop or on a Web site is difficult if specification sheets from different manufacturers are composed of different items, or similar items with different measures. To solve this obvious problem, a number of standards have been developed addressing minimum information to be included in specification sheets for a range of office equipment. Among the subjects covered are copying machines (ISO/IEC 11159:1996), printers (ISO/ Printers Cartridges Test methods Test pages IEC 11160:1996), image scanners (ISO/ IEC 14473:1999), facsimile equipment Toner – monochrome ISO/IEC 19752:2004 (ISO/IEC 15404:2000) and data projec- Laser Toner – colour ISO/IEC 19798:2007 tors (ISO/IEC 21118:2005). ISO/IEC Ink (for business ISO/IEC 24711:2007 24712:2007 documents) Inkjet Work item Work item Ink (for photos) About the author ISO/IEC 29102 ISO/IEC 29103

Akira Saito is a Figure 1 – International Standards for measuring yields for printer cartridges. part-time advisor (See also “ Supply standards : Past and future ”, ISO Focus, January 2008). to Japan Business Machine and Information • ISO/IEC 24700:2005, Quality and As market demand evolves, System Industries performance of office equipment that ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 28 will continue Association. to listen and respond with the appro- Now retired contains reused components priate tools. from IBM, • ISO/IEC 28360:2007, Determina- Mr. Saito is in tion of chemical emission rates from his sixth year as electronic equipment. Chair of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 28, Office Equipment. In 2004, he received a Blue Accessibility, too, has become Ribbon Medal from the Japanese more than a nice-to-have feature, and is government for his distinguished of growing importance, especially in an services in the field of IT standardization ageing society. In 2008, the new ISO/ over many years. IEC 10779, Office equipment accessi-

ISO Focus April 2009 21 © ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus

Main Focus

The colourful world of print – Standards at your service

by Dr. Uwe Bertholdt, Chair of ISO/TC 130, Graphic technology

uppose that you are assigned the organization of a comprehensive Smedia presentation for a new product to be launched worldwide. Not only are you expected to prepare the content Figure 1 – REM images of printing formes for different printing processes. and plan the campaign, but also to develop manuals, packages and advertising, select the media and manage all activities. Media usage patterns for different regional markets and age groups can be found from media analyses. You might choose to spend locally, but nonetheless the entire media mix would normally be used. According to recent surveys, 72 % of all consumers – regardless of age – read printed magazines. 1) And the share of printed advertisements exceeds 45 % of the total advertising market. 2) Since paper-bound information is still regarded as more reliable and often more convenient than online advertisements or the increasingly prevalent PDF documents, you would probably decide to use a significant share of the budget for printed matter. Figure 2 – Generation of characterization data. A more detailed insight into the world of print shows that : • The world print market was USD 610 These standards will be used to The characterization of the colour billion in 2006 and forecast to grow support the production of your print jobs reproduction capabilities for the various to USD 721 billion in 2011 in two ways: by making the work of the printing methods (lithographic, flexo- individual units of the production chain graphic, gravure, screen or digital print- • China, Germany , Japan, United King- reproducible, and by defining interface ing) is supported visually by the multipart dom and USA are and will be the top requirements between them. standard ISO 12640 and colorimetrical- five players in that market, while Chi- For example, using the standard- ly by the two-part ISO 12642. na, India, Russia, Ukraine and Vene- ized terms of the multipart standard ISO Throughout the process chain, col- zuela show the strongest growth. 3) 12637 on vocabulary will ensure unam- our reproduction quality must be checked, biguous communication within the val- evaluated and adjusted. This can be per- ue chain. formed both visually and colorimetrical- Supporting your print job The characteristics of cameras and Such an international industry scanners are specified in ISO 12641:1997, requires globally harmonized procedures Graphic technology – Prepress digit- 1) “Are You Ready for the Future of Media ? ” and specifications, and it is for this rea- al data exchange – Colour targets for State of the Media Democracy Survey, 2007, Deloitte. son that technical committee ISO/TC 130, input scanner calibration, while moni- Graphic technology, was created back in tors are addressed in ISO 12646:2008, 2) Online Advertising Spending Report, 2007, 1969. ISO/TC 130 is dedicated to devel- Graphic technology – Displays for col- Tomorrow Focus AG. oping International Standards for the be- our proofing – Characteristics and view- 3) World Wide Market for Print, 2007, Pira nefit of the graphic arts industry. ing conditions. International Ltd.

22 ISO Focus April 2009 © ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus ISO and the Media

ly. The standard, ISO 3664:2000, View- be implemented. If all information that is in the multipart standard ISO 2846. For ing conditions – Graphic technology and necessary is already available at the pre- the laboratory testing of these and oth- photography, defines specific illumination press stage, then ISO 12639:2004 (Tag er inks, test print procedures are given and visual evaluation conditions. Anoth- image file format for image technology – in the multipart standard ISO 2834, and er standard, ISO 13655:1996, Graphic TIFF/IT) may be used as the file format additional testing methods are defined in technology – Spectral measurement and for direct preparation of printing formes. ISO 2836:2004 (resistance against vari- colorimetric computation for graphic arts This standard adapts the TIFF format for ous agents), ISO 12040:1997 (resistance images, describes the requirements for use in the graphic arts. against light), ISO 12634:1996 (tackiness) colorimeters and the measuring condi- The prepress stage of your job and ISO 12644:1996 (rheology). tions for colour measurement. usually terminates with the delivery of The process control and colorimet- colour reliable (contract) proof prints as rical aims of the printing processes them- Moving through the prepress stage The different printing conditions (as characterized by both the process and substrate) possess individual colour gam- uts, which differ from those of cameras and monitors. To ensure visually consistent colour transformation to printed pictures, colour management procedures as defined in ISO 15076-1:2005 – a joint development with the International Col- our Consortium – have to be applied. The final data should be in PDF/X files with embedded formats and fonts. If all details of the printing conditions are known in advance, ISO 15930-4:2003 – one of the series of standards on prepress digital data exchange using PDF, in this case PDF/X-1a – may be applied. If the final data preparation is left to the printer, files compatible with ISO 15930-6:2003 (PDF/X-3) or ISO 15930-7:2008 (PDF/X-4) should be delivered. If variable data are to Figure 3 – News press printing unit. be exchanged, ISO 16612-1:2005 should the means to simulate the final printed selves are specified by the multipart stand- job. If these are printed digitally, ISO ard ISO 12647. This primarily defines the 12647-7:2007, addressing proofing pro- interface between prepress and production, About the author cesses working directly from digital data, but also provides guidance for the press run. needs to be applied. The standards ISO 14981 and ISO 13656, Dr. Uwe both published in 2000, help to control the Bertholdt is the Getting ready for achievement of the process control goals Chair of ISO/ by densitometry and colour measurement. TC 130, Graphic production Aspects of work safety are the focus of the Technology, and In a traditional printing method, multipart standard ISO 12643. the Convenor of the printing formes have to be produced its working after the digital information has been pre- group WG 4, pared. For the most popular lithographic High-quality result Media and printing process, the printing plates spec- Materials. The aim of standardization efforts Dr. Bertholdt ified by ISO 12635:2008 should be pre- in print is to ensure a consistent, reliable spent almost six years as the technical pared in accordance with ISO 12218:1997 and repeatable quality of printed work, manager of a small German ink manu- (process control, offset plate making) and independent of the time and location of facturer and is today the head of the ISO 11084-2:2006 (register pin systems the various parts of the print production Materials Department of Fogra Graphic for plate making). chain. So, in the context of your assign- Technology Research Association, the Additional consumables are blan- ment, this will also help you to use high- research institute based in Munich, kets for offset printing, specified in ISO quality printed matter to support your Germany. His main focus is the 12636, and printing inks. The colours of products worldwide. interaction of ink and paper. the four-colour printing ink sets are defined

ISO Focus April 2009 23 © ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus

Main Focus

Long live ISO 32000-1

The PDF standard

by James C. King, Adobe Systems Incorporated

he portable document format (PDF) In January 2007, Adobe decided owned by ISO. Adobe is just one organ- was invented by Adobe Systems to change that, and asked the Association ization that builds PDF products based TIncorporated in 1993. Since that time, for Information and Image Management upon the ISO standard. This removes it has become the predominant file format (AIIM), also known as the enterprise con- any risk that Adobe might move PDF in for general electronic documents. tent management (ECM) association, to a direction that could be harmful to other The success of this format is due work together with the American Nation- organizations. It is not that Adobe is not to two facts : al Standards Institute (ANSI) to submit trustworthy, but that ISO, being a neutral PDF to ISO, with a view to its becoming public organization, can be regarded as • Any computer application that can a publicly-available International Stand- more trustworthy. print to paper can also create an elec- ard. By January 2008, the project had been tronic version as a PDF file approved by the ISO membership, and the

• Free PDF viewing software for Win- completed specification was published a “The answer has to do dows, Mac and Linux computers is few months’ later as ISO 32000-1:2008, with trustworthiness, readily available. Document management – Portable docu- stability, change ment format – Part 1: PDF 1.7. Today, billions of PDF files exist, and responsibility.” as do thousands of applications written by hundreds of organizations. PDF became Trustworthiness and Once published by ISO, the stand- a de facto standard because it was so stability ard is stable. Small mistakes and errors widely used. So what difference has it made ? may be corrected but ISO 32000-1 as a The answer has to do with trustworthiness, whole cannot be changed. This brings a stability, change and responsibility. strong level of stability to PDF that frees Changing the status quo If an organization is going to people and organizations to invest in PDF Even though Adobe did not put invest in a given technology, it wants documents and PDF software. It also ena- any restrictions on other organizations to be assured that its investment will be bles exchange and interchange since eve- with respect to creating software that valuable in the future and not subject to ryone is working from the same common views, creates or modifies PDF files, it the proprietary interests of some other specification. A file either is, or is not, a kept ownership of the PDF Reference organization. Manual 1) that defined the standard. Ado- Today, the PDF technology is cap- 1) www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_ be “ owned ” PDF. tured in the ISO 32000-1 standard that is reference.html

24 ISO Focus April 2009 © ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus ISO and the Media

PDF file according to ISO 32000-1:2008. Given the size and complexity of paper documents are, it is essential to Software is compatible with the standard the standard, 756 pages of slow reading, have an electronic analogue. PDF serves if it can process PDF files correctly. this is no small undertaking. On the plus that purpose. There are established and well- side, the “ ISO ” that now owns PDF, is known procedures for introducing revi- not a faceless organization, but one com- sions and new editions of ISO standards. posed of bright, technical people who Advanced capabilities Open contributions from the member are willing to spend time to understand, But once a document is available countries are solicited. Draft standards are discuss, look at alternatives and help in an electronic form, there is an imme- created and circulated for review. Votes decide where PDF goes next. diate desire to do more with it than could are taken. It is an open and transparent be done with the paper version. For exam- process. Anyone with a vested interest ple, electronically searching the docu- should be able to become a member of A standard among ment for particular words is more effec- their national organization and take an standards tive than scanning pages with our eyes. active role in establishing a new direc- The ISO 32000-1 standard makes The introduction of hyperlinks that can tion for PDF. use of many other standards. Its norma- immediately carry us from one page/view tive reference section lists 79 standards of a document to another, and back again, “ Once published documents upon which PDF is built, gives us a function that is unavailable or by ISO, the standard including eleven ISO standards such very clumsy with paper. as JPEG, JPEG2000 and JBIG2 image Conversely, since people make is stable.” formats (see page 15), ICC Profile for- notes on documents published on paper, mats and ASN.1 notation. Other notable they similarly need to be able to anno- The other side of the coin of “ own- standards used directly by PDF include tate electronic documents. Functionality ership ” is responsibility. From June 1993 the OpenType font format, XML (see to support these examples – word/phrase until January 2008, Adobe was responsi- page 27) and Unicode. When PDF was search, annotations, hyperlinks – was add- ble for PDF. Today, PDF is ISO’s respon- being developed, every effort was made ed to PDF from an early date. sibility. That means that if a revision is to use existing standards. Advanced capabilities, well beyond needed to change or add some new func- Some ISO standards have been these more obvious examples, are also part tion to PDF, it is up to the relevant ISO developed to define constrained PDF of ISO 32000-1. They include : technical committee – ISO/TC 171, Doc- subsets for special applications. These • Forms for interactive completion and ument management applications, sub- include PDF/A for document archiving submission committee SC 2, Application issues – to (ISO 19005-1:2005), PDF/X for profes- propose and develop those changes, get sional publishing (ISO 15930 series) • Multimedia content, including vid- them thoroughly reviewed, approved and and PDF/E for engineering documents eo, Flash and sound published. (ISO 24517-1:2008). All of these stand- • Portfolios of files of any kind stored, ards actually pre-date the publication of indexed and accessible from within ISO 32000-1. one PDF file • Content layers About the author “ ISO is not a faceless • 3D interactive rendering Dr. James C. organization, but one • Digital signatures and digital rights King is a Senior composed of bright, Principal management. Scientist at technical people.” Adobe Systems Incorporated PDFs initial strength comes from Documents plus and works in the its ability to capture digitally an exact So not only does PDF allow us to San Jose, replica of the document as it would have the exact representation of a docu- California, USA, have printed onto paper. This means ment in electronic form, it also allows Headquarters of us to exploit the power of the compu- Adobe as the that material that would invariably end PDF Architect. He has worked at Adobe up as some kind of paper document can ter to extend what we can do with those for over 20 years starting the Advanced instead be represented as a computer documents. Technology Group in 1988. Before that, file and printed later or at some distant Long live ISO 32000-1 ! he was at IBM Research, both in York- place. Or better yet, it can be viewed on town Heights, New York, and San Jose a screen and never require paper. This is one of the best exam- California. He is a member of ISO/TC 2) Author of the book Being digital (1995) ; 171/SC 2. Dr. King received a Ph.D. in ples of moving bytes instead of atoms known for his forecasts on how the interactive 2) Computer Science from Carnegie as promoted by Nicholas Negroponte . world, the entertainment world and the Mellon University. As useful and well-loved as paper and information world would eventually merge.

ISO Focus April 2009 25 © ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus

Main Focus

ISO standards for optical discs are interchange and storage – Data migra- Optical data developed within joint technical committee tion method for DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD- ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology, RAM, +R, and +RW disks, was published storage – How subcommittee SC 23, Digitally recorded in February of this year. long will it last ? media for information interchange and Together, these two standards pro- storage. Until relatively recently, SC 23 vide a reliable system for DVD archiv- focused exclusively on specifications for ing applications. interchangeability of media, developing By following ISO/IEC 10995, users by Yoshinobu Mitsuhashi, Chair, standards for technologies such as CD- can select high-quality DVDs with a short ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 23, Digitally ROM and various types of DVD. practical measuring time for an archiv- recorded media for information ing system. Users are advised to measure a specified initial recording performance interchange and storage “ The number of optical disc according to ISO/IEC 29121. Discs for n just a few short years, DVDs have drives sold worldwide in data storage should be checked period- become the most successful consumer ically with the test frequency described 2007 is estimated to be in in the standard. Ientertainment product in history, quick- excess of 550 million.” ly eclipsing the earlier success of video- tape and compact discs. But their popularity is not confined Users are, of course, constantly to consumer electronics. Optical discs seeking media with higher capacity and also play an important role in the profes- higher data transfer rate. In particular, how- About the author sional digital universe, and now dominate ever, there is a growing demand for archi- both markets. The number of optical disc val digital data and increasing concerns Yoshinobu drives sold worldwide in 2007 is estimat- about the archival life of optical media. Mitsuhashi, ed to be in excess of 550 million, with a In response to market demand, ISO/IEC Chair of ISO/ market value of USD 21 billion. JTC 1/SC 23 has begun to address data IEC JTC 1/SC archiving issues. 23, Digitally recorded media A new need arises for information Reliable system interchange and Standardization of optical discs storage, gradu- In this respect, ISO/IEC 10995, was first discussed at the Topical Meet- ated from Tokyo 1) Information technology – Digitally ing on Optical Data Storage of 1983 , Institute of and the first ISO technical committee recorded media for information inter- Technology in 1964 and joined Electro- plenary on the subject was held in 1985, change and storage – Test method for technical Laboratory (now Advanced with participation from researchers, engi- the estimation of the archival lifetime of Industrial Science and Technology). neers and technocrats from industry and optical media, was published in 2008. It Since then he has studied optical academia. provides a simple method for estimating information processing. In 1983, the useful life of DVDs. Dr. Mitsuhashi became active in 1) Sponsored primarily by the Optical Society A further standard, ISO/IEC standardization of optical discs, and was of America (OSA) and IEEE, professional 29121:2009, Information technology – head of the Japanese national mirror association for the advancement of technology. Digitally recorded media for information committee for ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 23.

26 ISO Focus April 2009 © ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus ISO and the Media

If the recording performance is within a specified level, the disc is clas- sified into one of three categories : • Suitable for continued use • The data on the disc should be migrat- ed to another disc as soon as possible • The data on the disc should be cop- ied to another disc immediately to the extent that the data can be retrieved.

Essential steps for longevity The typical life of an optical disk is said to be 30 years, but in reality that may be anywhere from one year to a century or more. In a recent US government survey of 4 483 users, a majority considered archival longevity of more than 40 years to be important 2). While the industry can supply discs of high enough quality to survive for 40 years, disc drives gen- The good and the bad erally cannot meet that standard. For this Not as hard reason, users should change drives peri- The information and communica- odically as technology advances. as it sounds – tions technology industries have broadly adopted XML for use in data interchange “ Together, these two Using XML in applications, including a serialization tech- nique for aggregate data. The advantag- standards provide a reliable metadata-enabled es of XML are many, such as a readable system for DVD archiving infrastructure text format, standardization, available tool applications.” suites and support in open source software. But XML has its disadvantages, as well. For archival optical disc applica- These include significant space inefficien- tions, it is essential not only to select a by Frank Farance, Project editor cy, common misunderstandings about the quality disc, but also to migrate data on meaning of XML data, and multiple strat- the disc periodically. In 2008, a non-profit ISO/IEC 20944 series, and Dan egies for structuring data. organization, Archive Disc Test Center 3), Gillman, Information Scientist, Joint technical committee ISO/ was established in Japan to estimate the US Bureau of Labour Statistics IEC JTC 1, Information technology, sub- useful life of optical discs. ISO/IEC JTC committee SC 32, Data management and 1/SC 23 will continue its discussion of the ublished as a World Wide Web Con- interchange, has successfully used a het- necessity of standard media and standard sortium (W3C) recommendation in erogeneous metadata infrastructure (mul- drives to further promote archival optical P1998, the Extensible Markup Lan- tiple types of metadata, metadata regis- disc applications. guage (XML) is essentially a subset of the tries, metadata repositories, federated Standard Generalized Markup Language search) to overcome some of these disad- (SGML), designed for easier implemen- vantages while facilitating automated and 2) Optics & Photonics News, May 2007. tation and in particular for easier delivery semi-automated transformation of data. 3) www.n-adtc.org. and interoperability over the Web. How- The following are some of ISO/IEC JTC 1/ ever, XML is not only about marking up SC 32’s successful strategies. text. It also lends itself to complex valida- tion and management of content, or data, Don’t think in terms which is the aspect of XML addressed in this article. of XML Strategy No. 1 : Don’t think in terms of XML. Avoid XML bias. If your organization has an enterprise-wide man-

Usage needs / Use cases Informative wording

Functionality / Capability

Binding independent standards Abstract / Theory model

Conceptual data model

Bindings : APIs Bindings : codings Bindings : protocols

Encodings : ABIs calling Encodings : data formats Encodings : various conventions communication layers Binding standards

Figure 1 – A general layered data interoperability model

date to use XML, how can you not think • Encodings – low-level bit-byte and ASN.1), and as if you had to imple- about it? First, it is important to place XML sequences, such as data encodings: ment a programming language interface, in perspective with other technical deci- e.g., UTF-8; application binary inter- and as if you had to implement a session sions in developing interoperability speci- faces: Windows, Linux ELF; and/or layer network protocol, then you are like- fications and implementing systems. The communication layers: e.g. TCP/IP; ly to use XML in a straightforward way model shown in Figure 1 may be helpful (e.g. similar to showing (avoiding XML’s quirks). And you have in framing a bigger picture. in English, Chinese, etc.) allowed for growth if you have a future Data interoperability can be decom- If – instead of thinking specifi- posed into layers : 1) Abstract Syntax Notation 1 (ASN.1) is cally about XML – you design your data specified in the ISO/IEC 8824 and ISO/IEC • Usage needs and use cases – typical- interchange specification as if you had to 8825 series (ITU-T Recommendations X,680 ly, these are not standardized (e.g. a implement multiple codings (e.g. both XML and X.690). mailing list) • Functionality and capability – agreement upon function and purpose (e.g. About the authors postal addresses used for mailing let- Frank Farance Dan Gillman is ters) has been a an Information • Abstract/theory model – the theory developer of IT Scientist in the or abstraction operation of the sub- standards for Office of Sur- ject area (e.g. mailer sends letter, let- more than 25 vey Methods ter contains mailer’s postal address years, and the Research at the and addressee’s postal address, post- project editor US Bureau of for several ISO Labor Statistics. al carrier delivers letter from mailer standards, His work to addressee) including cur- includes statisti- • Conceptual data model – binding- rent projects: cal metadata independent framing of data model metadata interoperability and bindings management at the BLS, national and (e.g. postal address is comprised of (ISO/IEC 20944 series) and metadata international statistical metadata initia- a delivery point and an addressee) modules (ISO/IEC 19773); and pub- tives, and national and international lished standards: general purpose data- metadata standards. He has written • Bindings – mapping to bindings, such types (ISO/IEC 11404:2007), and the C extensively on metadata issues, chairs as codings: e.g. XML, ASN.1 1); appli- programming language (ISO/IEC the UN Economic Commission for cation programming interfaces: e.g. C, 9899:1999). For the past ten years, Mr. Europe working group on statistical Java; and/or protocols: HTTP, Web- Farance has been the ISO/IEC JTC 1 metadata, chairs a US technical DAV; (e.g. choice of tags for postal representative to the ISO Information committee for metadata standards, and addresses such as , , technology strategies implementation is editor for several international , etc.) group (ISO/ITSIG). metadata standards.

Characteristic : concept need for another coding, application pro- that plays the role of a • Standardized characteristics (e.g. gramming interface, or protocol. determinable in a determining temperature) The metadata-enabled environment relation. A characteristic is • Standardized property values for those being developed in SC 32’s working group associated with a concept, characteristics (e.g. a quantitative scale WG 2, Metadata (see next article), allows whereas a property is such as degrees Celsius, or a qualitative automated transformation between XML associated with a subset scale such as cold, cool, warm, hot) and ASN.1 codings. Data element meta- of objects in the concept’s data is recorded in the multipart ISO/IEC • Standardized property value codes (e.g. extension. 11179, Information technology – Meta- a signed 16-bit big endian binary inte- data registries (MDR), to facilitate the Property : concept that plays ger, or the codes KLD, COO, WRM, automatic XML-ASN.1 conversion. This the role of a determinant in HOT) strategy allows us to use an efficient bina- a determining relation. For • Standardized datatypes for the prop- ry transfer method (ASN.1) on low band- example, the characteristic erty valuespace (e.g. an enumerated, width data links, and use XML elsewhere “ [has] mass ” is a feature ordered state datatype) (which satisfies an enterprise-wide need). of humans, yet one human Also relevant is the ISO/IEC 20944 series, has the property “[mass is] • Standardized naming/navigation for the Information technology – Metadata Regis- 80 Kg” and another human value (e.g. human_status.body_temper- tries Interoperability and Bindings (MDR- has the property “ [mass is] ature). IB), currently under development, which 110 Kg ”. In this example, the Without agreement upon these has incorporated this multiple-binding determinable “ mass ” has five features for each element of data approach for metadata/data. a quantifiable determinant exchanged, data interoperability might (mass measured in Kg). The be limited and data exchange might be Married or not married? same determinable could ambiguous or misunderstood. As in Strategy No. 2, we store Strategy No. 2: XML Tags don’t have a different range of mean what you think. Define precise determinants, such as a this type of information in our metada- meanings. We have heard many people qualitative determinant (thin, ta repositories to automate and facilitate say “the advantage of using XML is that fit, obese) or a boolean data interchange, and this kind of infor- you can understand the data by looking determinant (true-false, mation applies across bindings: SQL col- at the XML record”. First, humans are which would be “ true ” for all umns, C programming language struc- much better than computers when inter- humans). tures, and XML elements. preting ambiguities; second, humans still Property valuespace : the get it wrong! set of possible values for a Disadvantages rectified Take for example the XML frag- property with respect to a ment from a personnel record : characteristic. married ification-time, implementation-time, and Is the value married from the set { run-time help to improve the interoper- single, married } or from the set { single, tual domain would be used to precisely ability of data, including XML data. By married, separated, divorced, widowed and unambiguously describe the marital- incorporating run-time support via a meta- }? In the case of a person who is married status feature above, regardless of whether data infrastructure (metadata repositories, but not living with his/her spouse, then it was implemented as an SQL column, a real-time access to metadata), many inter- married would be the right value if the Java class, or an XML element. ISO/IEC operability and data transformation opera- first set was in use, and married would 11404:2007, Information technology – Gen- tions can be automated or semi-automat- be the wrong value if the second set was eral purpose datatypes (GPD), is used for ed. Finally, virtually all of the XML dis- in use. Even if the first set were agreed defining datatypes (ISO/IEC 11404 works advantages are rectified with this meta- upon, the meaning would still not be clear: well with ISO/IEC 11179). data-enabled infrastructure. does married mean “currently married” (a Thus, the XML schemas spec- divorced person is single) or does it mean ify syntax, while the metadata (ISO/ “ ever been married ” (a divorced person IEC 11179, ISO/IEC 11404) specify the is considered married). semantics. Although a variety of XML methods (such as schema repositories) can help, XML When cold becomes KLD provides no description of data semantics. We use ISO/IEC 11179 and a combination Strategy No. 3 : Use cross-bind- of its descriptive features : data elements, ing techniques for data interoperabili- data element concepts, value domains and ty specifications. The following features conceptual domains. For example, an ISO/ must be defined for every kind of data IEC 11179 value domain and its concep- exchanged (see also Box):

Main Focus

Making life easier in an XML world

by Denise B. Warzel, Acting Convenor, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 32/WG 2, Metadata

xtensible Markup Language (XML) is a flexible text format widely Eused for describing and storing data for interchange on the Web. One of its most important features is its ease of use. Angle brackets <> containing text descriptions – or “ tags ” – organized into nested structures, encapsulate data to help end users understand its meaning, thus rendering the data within the document “ self-descriptive ”. This characteristic, that data and its description are carried together, is largely responsible for XML’s broad appeal and utility across media and other industries. However, the use of text labels to convey meaning has some recognized limitations for both humans and computers. Human understanding is limited by the users’ ability to interpret the author’s language, naming convention and information model, which can be a hindrance, particularly when attempting to compare the meaning of data across different XML documents from different sources. Computers are largely limited to comparisons of text strings (exact matches) for searching or aggregating data, which can also require that the document tags be in exactly the same order.

Adding enhancements humans and computers to interpret and “ I SO standards can provide validate the data. Several other specifications by the In addition, query languages such a way for data owners to World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), in as SPARQL (Protocol and RDF Query improve upon XML’s self- particular Resource Description Frame- Language) can be used with these tech- work (RDF) and Web Ontology Language nologies with exciting possibilities for descriptive characteristics.” (OWL), enhance XML’s expressiveness text-based information discovery. How- by providing additional standard mech- ever, since schema languages also rely on anisms for describing data. the use of text strings for naming sche- About the author Schema languages (e.g. XML ma elements and attributes, the limita- Schema Definition: XSD, RDFS, OWL- tions of text-based processing remain. Denise B. Warzel is Associate Director, S) can enhance the use and understanding Their use for interpreting or finding CORE Program Manager, Center for of data contained in these documents by data that can be combined from differ- Biomedical Informatics and Information enabling data owners to provide mean- ent sources or transformed for aggrega- Technology, National Cancer Institute, ingful constraints on the document’s con- tion is still limited. National Institutes of Health, USA, and tent, which can make it easier for both Acting Convenor of JTC 1/SC 32/WG 2.

to promote common understanding of lastName ”), different languages or dif- the meaning and representation of data ferent modelling paradigms. for management, interchange, harmo- Leveraging the ISO/IEC 11179 nization, discovery and reuse. metadata standard and W3C SAWSDL How can this be achieved? The specification brings together two pow- ISO/IEC 11179 series of standards is erful mechanisms for describing data to intended to enable the creation and help address some of the challenges fac- registration of metadata descriptions ing data owners and users of XML for for application data and data standards the purposes of data interchange and that are precise, explicit and unambig- integration. uous, and useful for humans and com- Two areas of work to note in joint puters. ISO/IEC 11179-6:2005, Infor- technical committee ISO/IEC JTC1, sub- mation technology – Metadata registries committee SC 32, Data management (MDR) – Part 6: Registration, specifies and interchange, working group WG 2, the assignment of International Regis- Metadata, are : tration Data Identifiers (IRDI), which • The revision of ISO/IEC 11179 to are a composite of a unique organiza- expand and integrate the use of con- tion identifier (the registrar), in accord- cepts and concept systems so as to ance with ISO/IEC 6523, Information anchor the meaning of ISO/IEC 11179 technology – Structure for the identifi- metadata descriptions cation of organizations and organization parts, and the MDR item identifi- • Further development of the ISO/IEC er and version. 19763 family of standards on meta- These unique item identifiers model framework for interoperabil- serve to encapsulate the meaning of the ity (MFI). data they describe and can be incorporated into a uniform resource identifier (URI) or uniform resource locator (URL) “ Leveraging ISO 11179 to make it easy to access the informa- and W3C SAWSDL brings tion via the Web. While SAWSDL is together two powerful designed as a way to reference ontology concepts (model reference) and mapping mechanisms for describing schemas (lifting/lowering schema map- data.” ping) for relating elements in an XML schema, or Web service description to a The ISO/IEC 19763 series pro- URI, it provides a convenient and use- vides mechanisms for registering various ful mechanism for referencing ISO/IEC types of information technology artefacts 11179 MDR IRDIs for use by humans to support discovery and sharing of data and computers. The registered metada- and services on the Web. These include ta can be accessed and used to interpret, registration of ontologies (Part 3), mod- compare and integrate data in different el mappings (Part 4) and process mod- documents from different sources, help- els (Part 5). A possible Part 7 for a met- ing to overcome the limitations of text amodel on service registration has been descriptions. Useful for humans and proposed to facilitate their reuse across computers organizations. Can ISO standards provide a way Powerful mechanisms for data owners to improve upon XML’s For more information self-descriptive characteristics? Combin- In addition to model references, ing features of ISO/IEC 11179, Infor- SAWSDL provides a mechanism to ref- The ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 32/WG 2 mation technology – Metadata regis- erence stored data transformations – or Web site, containing links to its current tries (MDR), and the W3C specification model mappings – which can be derived projects, can be found at http:// for semantic annotation for Web Serv- from ISO/IEC 11179 metadata and used metadata-standards.org ice Definition Language (WSDL) and to address the problems of integrating XML schema (SAWSDL), provides the data between schema elements that are potential for data owners to mitigate or semantically identical but have differ- eliminate the limitations of XML’s text- ent data representations, (e.g. “1”=Yes, based format. Registered metadata can be “Y”=Yes), different structures (e.g. shared within and between organizations “ Name ” and “ firstName, middleInitial,

ISO Focus April 2009 31 © ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus Development and Initiatives Paving the way for flawless data exchange

by Arthur de Groof, Project officer for SIKB, and Frank Lamé, Chair, ISO/TC 190, Soil Quality

he increase in the amount of data flying around the world is noth- T ing less than breathtaking. In 2007 alone, more unique data were created than in the previous 5 000 years ! Not too long ago, new data were produced by physically reading an instru- ment and jotting down the value in a logbook. When full, the logbook was stored alongside other logbooks in what could be called the database. To access the information, it was necessary to either physically go to the database, or ask a data manager to create copies of the required pages and have them sent. These cumbersome procedures were facilitated first by automatic data loggers, and then by a rapid succession of ever-faster computers, exponentially increasing the sheer volume of data produced. As databases followed this trend, they have become larger and larger. This is of course a great boon for anyone requiring information – as long as the data can be easily accessed. Sever- al formats have been developed over the years to facilitate access, but in a way, digital data is just like electric current : it can pass only if the plug fits the socket. Standards play a crucial role in ensuring this viability, and as databases are continuously developing, the need for Inter- national Standards for data exchange is growing rapidly.

Halted flow The environmental sector has matured considerably over the last four decades. One consequence is the increasing number and importance of various measurements, which has in turn resulted in a greater demand for standards. Vast databases on soils have been developed by national and internation-

Soil quality goes digital

ISO/TC 190, Soil quality, was al pedological, geological, agricultural created in 1985. Both the Technology is here and environmental institutions. The fact chair and secretariat are held For some years now, the Nether- that soil characteristics are determined by NEN. lands has maintained a national quality from at least four different perspectives The committee currently assurance structure for all critical activ- underlines the need to harmonize data has 23 fully participating ities in site characterization and remedi- exchange. members and 33 observers, ation. Within this structure, amidst cer- working on soil quality in six tification and accreditation schemes for “ Digital data are just like subcommittees. In addition, fieldwork, analyses and more, there is electric current : they can 11 international organizations a digital format (in the XML program- pass only if the plug fits are in liaison. ming language) for the exchange of dig- The future standard ital data. This format is being developed the socket.” and expanded continuously to keep up discussed in this article is with new market demands and techno- Digital technology has made these being developed by a working logical developments. databases far more accessible than before, group of subcommittee 1 The keeper of the format, the enabling, for example, a consultant in a (ISO/TC 190/SC 1/WG 3, Foundation Infrastructure for Quality site characterization project to create a Evaluation of criteria, Assurance of Soil Management (SIKB), much better sampling plan much more terminology and codification). quickly. More recently, fieldworkers faced the challenges described above. In have started directly inputting their data The chair and secretariat of consultation with the Netherlands’ stand- in handheld computers and sending the ISO/TC 190/SC 1 and ardization body and ISO member, NEN, information to consultants via the Inter- WG 3 are held by the French the parties involved concluded that the net. Consultants in turn, send the data to standardization body and technology required to meet these chal- laboratories online, and then download ISO member, AFNOR. The lenges is all either available or under the test results. subcommittee currently development. Together, SIKB and NEN With this working methodology, has 17 fully participating decided to launch a proposal for a new consultants, laboratory personnel and oth- members and 12 observers. ISO standard. er involved parties require seamless data exchange. But more often than not, consultants can only communicate online with Grounding solutions one or very few laboratories. A consult- The result is a new standard on ant’s own data cannot easily be re-used by “ With the new recording and exchange of soil-related another consultant performing a second International Standard, ISO data, currently being developed by ISO/ opinion or follow-up research. And then TC 190/SC 1, Evaluation of criteria, ter- there are the challenges in aggregating will provide a sound yet minology and codification. The commit- data by authorities, for example in moni- flexible basis for tee’s draft version will be released during toring programmes. Site characterization the seamless transfer of the second quarter of 2009, for discussion is only one example; similar issues are in November of this year. According to encountered in many other fields. digital soil data.” the current timetable, the new standard could be available in 2011. The information given in the About the authors standard should provide the context for the presentation of results of a site char- Arthur de Frank Lamé acterization, including analyses under- Groof is Pro- has been taken on soil samples. gramme Secre- involved in To ensure “ that all plugs fit all tary for SIKB, environmental sockets ” so that data can be accessed by a foundation standardization all, the standard defines the information that maintains a since 1987, on a that could be included in any site inves- quality assur- national, Euro- tigation report. Where considered use- ance structure pean (CEN) as ful, the standard provides guidelines to for soil quality well as interna- in the Nether- tional (ISO) the encoding of data, in most cases by lands. He is level. Since referring to other International Stand- involved in projects for the further 2001 he has served as Chair of ISO/TC ards, for example ISO 25177:2008, Soil development of several quality assur- 190, Soil Quality, and as Chair of CEN/ quality – Field soil description. ance guidelines, and responsible for the TC 345, Characterisation of Soils, since Anyone using software that follows further development of a format for the its establishment in 2002. these formats and guidelines should be exchange of digital soil data. able to rely upon a flawless data transfer,

Development and Initiatives

without needing to know about the technology behind it. Still, soil contamina- tion experts will want to be in charge of The consequences of their own data. Therefore, the new standard will also describe the way soil con- tamination descriptions can be placed, silence referred to and recognized in the data format or in data sets encoded according to the new standard. The subcommittee aims to optimize flexibility, as well as to provide for the need to handle geographical features. With the new International Stand- ard on recording and exchange of soil- related data, ISO will be providing a sound and yet flexible basis for the seamless transfer of digital soil data, including geographical features. It should be worthwhile to discuss the applicability of the same principles in other sectors.

Integrated national structure for quality assurance Over the past decade, the Nether- lands has developed an integrated structure for quality assurance of all critical activities in site characterization and remediation. Critical activities have been defined as those activities having a deci- sive influence on results at the end of the by Donald E. Purcell, Chairman, ince 1996 the US Court of chain, for example sampling, chemical Center for Global Standards Appeals for the Federal Cir- analysis and site remediation. Crucial to cuit (Federal Circuit) and the Analysis S the structure is the fact that both public US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and private parties play a role. have published several decisions con- The national authorities have laid cerning standardization activities and disclosure of patents, or pending pat- down the rule that any critical activity in This article is reproduced site characterization and remediation can ent applications, that are reasonably only be performed by licensed organi- by permission of the necessary to comply with a standard zations. Such licenses can be obtained Standards Engineering being developed. only by organizations which are certi- Society (SES). The article These decisions provide a body fied or accredited to perform the crit- was first published in of law, advice and guidelines for indi- viduals, firms, corporations and stand- ical activity. Most documents describ- Standards Engineering, the ing the requirements for performance of ards development organizations con- the activity are maintained by SIKB, a Journal of the Standards cerning development of standards and 1) foundation in which both the public and Engineering Society, disclosure of patents. the private parties concerned participate Vol. 61, No. 1, January/ On December 1, 2008, the Fed- (www.sikb.nl). For the technical require- February 2009. eral Circuit announced its decision in ments, these documents most often refer Qualcomm v. Broadcomm, 548 F.3d to standards maintained by NEN. For subscription or membership 1004. As stated by Circuit Judge Prost, information contact SES, 13340 “[t]his patent infringement case involves SW 96th Avenue, Miami, Florida the consequence of silence in the face of a duty to disclose patents in a stand- 33176, USA. ards-setting organization (“ SSO ”)” (emphasis added). The Court’s decision affirmed in part, vacated in part,

and remanded the decision of the trial 318 F.3d 1081, 1100 (Fed. Cir. 2003) and does not clearly require disclosure court in Qualcomm Inc. v. Broadcom (emphasis added). of patents necessary to comply with a Corp., 539 F.Supp. 2d 1214 (USDC It is important to note that the standard? S.D. Cal. Aug. 6, 2007). Federal Circuit found Qualcomm had Third, the Qualcomm decision The Qualcomm decision is impor- failed twice in its duty to disclose pat- stands for the proposition that failure tant for several reasons. First, the Fed- ents or pending patent applications. to disclose participation in a standards eral Circuit reaffirmed the principle of Although the standards joint venture project and failure to meet a duty to dis- Rambus Inc. v. Infineon Technologies arguably did not expressly require disclose patents or pending patent applica- AG, 318 F. 3d 1081, 1098 (Fed.Cir. closure of patents, the Court noted that tions necessary to meet a standard being 2003) that expectations of standardiza- the patent policy required participants developed can be very expensive. The tion participants are a controlling factor to use “ best efforts to provide informa- Federal Circuit affirmed the trial court’s in a standards proceeding. As stated by tion concerning intellectual property misconduct findings against Qualcomm the Court, if standardization participants rights ” to all participants in the stand- based upon (1) “ bad faith participation ” treat a patent policy as requiring disclo- ards project. in the joint standards venture; and (2) sure of patents or pending patent appli- The Court relied on the expec- “ litigation misconduct . . . during dis- cations that reasonably might be nec- tations of joint venture participants to covery, motions practice, trial and post- essary to comply with a standard being establish a de facto rule of patent dis- trial proceedings.” developed, there is a duty for a partici- closure in a manner similar to Rambus. The Federal Circuit affirmed pant to disclose such patents. In addition, the Federal Circuit found the trial court’s decision to award legal the ITU/ISO/IEC Patent Policy spe- expenses against the company for fail- “ In a world dominated by cifically applied to Qualcomm, a par- ure to properly disclose its patents in ticipant in the joint venture standards the joint venture project and for Qual- globalization, the Federal project, and this policy set forth a spe- comm’s intentionally “ organized plan Circuit’s Qualcomm cific duty to disclose patents, or pend- of repeated false claims during discov- ing patent applications, reasonably nec- ery, trial and post-trial ” by the compa- decision is an important essary to comply with a standard being ny’s attorneys and witnesses. Note that landmark.” developed. on January 7, 2008, a Federal Magis- Second, the Federal Circuit trate issued a decision that (1) provided The Federal Circuit’s Qualcomm extended a patent disclosure duty to an initial award of $8.5 million in legal decision contains an extensive discus- international joint ventures established fees to Broadcomm, and (2) referred six sion of the legal standard set forth in by SSOs. This is the first court decision Qualcomm attorneys to the California Rambus that a standardization partic- to require such disclosures in the con- State Bar for possible sanctions. ipant’s “duty to disclose [to the SSO] text of an international standards setting extended only to claims in patents or project. This aspect of the Qualcomm applications that reasonably might be decision raises an interesting question “ The Federal Circuit necessary to practice the standard. In – Are all international joint ventures, decision confirms that the other words, this duty encompassed consortia, or ad hoc standards groups consequences of silence any patent or application with claims now subject to a de facto patent dis- that a competitor or other [SSO] mem- closure policy where a patent is found are very significant.” ber reasonably would construe to cov- to be reasonably necessary to comply er the standardized technology.” Ram- with a standard being developed regard- In a world dominated by globali- bus Inc. v. Infineon Technologies AG, less of whether there is an actual pat- zation, international competition, engi- ent disclosure policy, or a patent dis- neering, science and technology, the Fed- closure policy exists but is ambiguous eral Circuit’s December 1, 2008, Qual- 1) In the Matter of Rambus Incorporated, comm decision is an important landmark Docket No. 9302, (FTC Decision August 2, concerning the disclosure of participation 2006), remanded, 522 F.3d 456 (USCA D.C. in a standards project, and disclosure of April 22, 2008), petition for writ of certiorari About the author patents or pending patent applications filed (US Supreme Court, No. 08-694); In during a standards project (national or the Matter of N-Data, File No. 051 0094, Donald E. Purcell is Chairman of the international) that are reasonably nec- (FTC Decision January 23, 2008) ; In the Center for Global Standards Analysis. essary to comply with a standard being Matter of Chevron Corporation and Union Oil Don Purcell is a recognized expert in developed. In short, the Federal Circuit Company of California, Docket No. 9305 (FTC strategic relationships between Decision June 10, 2005) ; Rambus v. Infineon globalization, international standardiza- decision confirms that the consequenc- Technologies, 318 F.3d 1081 (USCA Fed.Cir. tion and strategic standards education es of silence by a participant in a stand- January 29, 2003), reversing and remanding, ards project under such circumstances Rambus v. Infineon Technologies, 164 F.Supp. initiatives. This article represents the are very significant. 2d 743 (USDC E.D.Va. August 9, 2001) ; In Chairman’s personal views ; the Matter of Dell Corporation, 121 F.T.C. 616 see www.strategicstandards.com and (May 20, 1996). www.purcellfox.com for background.

ISO/TS 25237:2008 was devel- This third edition of ISO Supporting privacy oped by ISO technical committee ISO/ 14050:2009, Environmental manage- protection in health TC 215, Health informatics. It provides ment – Vocabulary, has been fully updat- a conceptual model of the problem are- ed to include the latest developments in informatics as, requirements for trustworthy practices, the field. The standard now provides clear and specifications to support the planning and concise definitions of all concepts by Janet Maillard, Assistant and implementation of pseudonymization and terms used throughout the ISO 14000 services. More precisely, it : series in the three official ISO languages, Editor, ISO Focus • Defines a basic concept for pseudo- English, French and Russian, as well as new ISO technical specification will nymization in Arabic and Spanish. The standard also help to reconcile the increasing use provides equivalent terms in Dutch, Finn- • Gives an overview of different use cases ish, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portu- in healthcare of electronic process- for pseudonymization that can be both A guese and Swedish. ing of patient data with increasing patient reversible and irreversible expectations for privacy protection. An ISO survey published last year ISO/TS 25237:2008, Health infor- • Defines a basic methodology for pseu- showed that up to the end of 2007 at least matics – Pseudonymization, contains prin- donymization services including organ- 154 572 certificates of compliance with ciples and requirements for privacy pro- izational as well as technical aspects ISO 14001:2004 (requirements for envi- tection using pseudonymization services • Gives a guide to risk assessment for ronmental management systems) had been for the protection of personal health infor- re-identification issued in 148 countries. Commenting on mation in databases. these results, Håvard Hjulstad, Convenor • Specifies a policy framework and mini- Pseudonymization (from pseudo- of the ISO/TC 207 Terminology Coordi- mal requirements for trustworthy prac- nym) allows for the nation Group which developed the stand- tice for the operations of a pseudonymi- removal of an asso- ard, said “ Given the global context, and zation service ciation with a data the extent of the application of the ISO subject. It differs • Specifies a policy framework and min- 14000 standards, it is clear now more than from anonymiza- imal requirements for controlled re- ever that ISO 14050 is crucial for ensur- tion (anonymous) identification ing that all the users of these standards are on the same page, no matter where in in that it allows for • Specifies interfaces for the interoper- the world they are.” data to be linked to ability of services interfaces. the same person Mr. Hjulstad added, “ ISO 14050 across multiple data ISO/TC 25237:2008, Health infor- will clarify any doubts that users of the records or informa- matics – Pseudonymization, is available ISO 14000 series may have concerning tion systems with- from ISO national member institutes. It terminology and concepts, which is par- out revealing the may also be obtained directly from the ticularly important given the key role identity of the per- ISO Central Secretariat by contacting the communication plays in the standards. By son. Marketing & Communication department helping to maintain consistency, the ISO ISO/TS 25237:2008 ([email protected]). 14050 will also be very helpful to devel- is applicable to opers of standards, in particular those organizations that working on translations.” make a claim of trustworthiness for opera- Facilitating ISO 14050:2008, Environmental tions engaged in pseudonymization serv- management – Vocabulary, was developed ices. Application areas include, but are implementation by ISO technical committee ISO/TC 207, not limited to : of ISO 14000 family Environmental management. It is available from ISO national member institutes. • Research, or other secondary use of in 12 languages It may also be obtained directly from the clinical data ISO Central Secretariat by contacting the Marketing & Communication department • Clinical trials and post-marketing sur- by Maria Lazarte, Acting Editor, veillance ([email protected]). ISO Focus • Public health monitoring and assessment newly revised ISO standard will facilitate even further the appli- • Confidential patient-safety reporting cation of the ISO 14000 series on (e.g. adverse drug effects) A environmental management. By estab- • Comparative quality indicator report- lishing a common vocabulary, the stand- ing ard will ensure the effectiveness of communication, key for the implementation • Peer review and operation of environmental manage- • Consumer groups. ment systems (EMS).

Main Focus The workshop confirmed that key players in the energy sector consider International Standards to be essential Partners tional efforts, allowing a concerted instruments to support the implemen- response to tackling contemporary ISO’s standardization work is not tation of energy efficiency practices. international concerns. carried out in isolation. In order to The experts underlined their commit- develop International Standards that The May issue of ISO Focus is dedi- ment to contribute to and collaborate are practical, address current needs, cated to our partners, emphasizing this in the development of these standards. and will be widely adopted in their collaboration which is so crucial to the ISO Secretary-General Rob Steele fields, it is crucial to include a large success of international standardization. emphasized the importance of spectrum of stakeholders so that all Impossible to feature the hundreds of standardization for energy efficiency : views are reflected in the end product. organizations that ISO cooperates “ Today’s trends in world energy with, the issue offers just a taste of the demand give the sense of urgency. But these are not the only reasons extensive range of ISO partners. why partnership is one of ISO’s core We need to act now with available values. Just try to imagine the huge A number of organizations from very solutions, which need to be applied and varied scope of subjects covered different fields and of very different and International Standards are part by ISO standards : from screw sizes to types will tell us why they cooperate of the solution.” food safety management, from data with ISO, elaborate on the benefits of exchange to automobiles, from print- this collaboration and on the comple- ing to security in the supply chain. mentarity of their work. Read our next This diversity requires a flexible issue to find out more ! system that can successfully bring together key experts and stakeholders in their respective fields. Partnership Developments and and collaboration are also essential to Initiatives ensure harmonization with the efforts of the international community. ISO, IEC, IEA energy workshop Apart from the 160 countries repre- Cooperation on International Standards sented by ISO members and the to promote energy efficiency and thousands of technical experts from reduce carbon emissions was given a around the world devoting part of their major boost by a workshop in Paris, time to developing International France, in March 2009, which brought Standards, ISO has liaisons with more together 290 experts from the public than 700 international organizations. and private sector. These organizations often participate in the meetings of ISO committees, The workshop was jointly organized To find out more about the outcome contributing to making even more glo- by the International Energy Agency of the workshop and the recommenda- bally relevant standards. This coopera- (IEA), ISO and the International Elec- tions made, don’t miss out the next tion enables harmonization of interna- trotechnical Commission (IEC). issue of ISO Focus.

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