As you are aware, ISO International Standards provide the international community with practical tools for tackling global challenges such as energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, climate change, health, safety, security and the dissemination of innovative technologies. ISO have developed a new Web section which will periodically highlight topics of international concern, or which occupy the media headlines; these will be in areas where there are published ISO standards, standards under development or ongoing standardization initiatives that are relevant to these concerns and that can contribute to resolving them.
The current ‘hot topics’ are :
Nanotechnologies
Nanotechnologies cover a variety of fields of applied science and technology whose unifying theme is the control of matter on the atomic and molecular scale, generally 100 nanometers or smaller.
Nanotechnologies require the integration of many scientific, engineering and technical disciplines and International Standards contribute at three levels: assisting the innovation process, addressing the challenges in measurement at the nanoscale, and helping to alleviate concerns over potential health and environmental impacts with validated test methods and protocols to determine actual impacts.
Climate change
Out of a current total of more than 17 000 ISO normative documents, some 570 are environment-related, including recent standards specifically developed to support greenhouse gas (GHG) emission accounting, claim verification and trading. More information on ISO work within this field is available.
Energy
Facilitating energy efficiency and renewable energy sources is a strategic focus area for ISO. This Energy section presents related material, including the special issue of ISO Focus developed for the November 2007 World Energy Congress.
More information on ISO work within these fields, plus papers of interest is available by following the link below:
http://www.iso.org/iso/hot_topics.htm
