Metrology is everywhere in life. No one can live without it. Automobile speed is monitored to ensure safe driving and reduce road casualties. Medical examinations help us to know our health conditions. Measurement gives us ways to know the amount of water, electricity and gas consumed in a day. However, a small error in measurement would easily cause severe consequences. For example, a deviation in measurement in a market transaction harm the interests of both parties, while a mistake in medical measurement may severely damage people’s health.
Under all these circumstances and when buyers and sellers in business transactions want to protect their interests or use metrological results to impose sanctions, legislation over metrology and measuring instruments are needed. As a matter of fact, all countries need metrological legislation to provide this kind of protections – hence the term “legal metrology”. It refers to all technical and administrative management procedures legally established on metrology and measuring instruments, which are used to ensure the quality of metrology conducted in business transactions, healthcare, safety and other sectors. A reliable legal metrology system ensures the precision and traceability of measurement. Therefore, it is critical to realize the global mutual recognition of test results.
At the international level, the legal metrology system of a certain country has to be coordinative and compatible with international systems. The responsibilities of OIML are to formulate international standards in the legal metrology field, coordinate the international cooperation among legal metrological bodies of different countries, and facilitate the important role of legal metrology in trade, safety, health and environment.