This article depicts the role of the Digital Calibration Certificate (DCC) for an end-to-end digital quality infrastructure and as the basis for developments that are designated by the keyword “Industry 4.0”. Furthermore, it describes the impact the DCC has on increasing productivity in the manufacturing of products and in global trade. The DCC project is international in its scope. Calibration certificates document the measurement capability of a measurement system. They do this independently and by providing traceability to measurement standards. Therefore, they do not only play an important role in the world of metrology, but they also make it possible for manufacturing and commercial enterprises to exchange measurement values reliably and correctly at the national and at the international level. Thus, a DCC concept is urgently needed for the end-to-end digitalization of industry for the era of Industry 4.0 and for Medicine 4.0. A DCC brings about important advantages for issuers and for users. The DCC leads to the stringent, end-to-end, traceable and process-oriented organization of manufacturing and trading. Digitalization is thus a key factor in the field of calibration as it enables significant improvements in product and process quality. The reason for this is that the transmission of errors will be prevented, and consequently, costs will be saved as the time needed for distributing and disseminating the DCCs and the respective calibration objects will be reduced. Furthermore, it will no longer be necessary for the test equipment administration staff to update the data manually, which is a time-consuming, tedious and error-prone process.

Thus far, emergency calls are answered by human operators who interview the calling person in order to obtain all relevant information. In the near future—based on the Internet of (Medical) Things (IoT, IoMT)—accidents, emergencies, or adverse health events will be reported automatically by smart homes, smart vehicles, or smart wearables, without any human in the loop. Several parties are involved in this communication: the alerting system, the rescue service (responding system), and the emergency department in the hospital (curing system). In many countries, these parties use isolated information and communication technology (ICT) systems. Previously, the International Standard Accident Number (ISAN) has been proposed to securely link the data in these systems. In this work, we propose an ISAN-based communication platform that allows semantically interoperable information exchange. Our aims are threefold: (i) to enable data exchange between the isolated systems, (ii) to avoid data misinterpretation, and (iii) to integrate additional data sources. The suggested platform is composed of an alerting, responding, and curing system manager, a workflow manager, and a communication manager. First, the ICT systems of all parties in the early rescue chain register with their according system manager, which tracks the keep-alive. In case of emergency, the alerting system sends an ISAN to the platform. The responsible rescue services and hospitals are determined and interconnected for platform-based communication. Next to the conceptual design of the platform, we evaluate a proof-of-concept implementation according to (1) the registration, (2) channel establishment, (3) data encryption, (4) event alert, and (5) information exchange. Our concept meets the requirements for scalability, error handling, and information security. In the future, it will be used to implement a virtual accident registry.

Zusammenfassung: Der Prototyp eines maschinenlesbaren und maschineninterpretierbaren Digitalen Kalibrierscheins (DCC, engl. Digital Calibration Certificate) wurde bereits im Jahr 2017 in den PTB-Mitteilungen [S. Hackel, F. Härtig, J. Hornig, und T. Wiedenhöfer, The Digital Calibration Certificate, PTB-Mitteilungen, vol. 127, Bd. 4, S. 7, 2017 [Online]. Verfügbar unter: https://oar.ptb.de/resources/show/10.7795/310.20170403 [Zugegriffen: Jul. 2, 2019].] veröffentlicht. Die Idee basiert auf dem im Jahr 2016 von der PTB skizzierten europäischen Forschungsvorhaben SmartCom (17IND02) [,,Welcome to SmartCom”, 2021 [Online]. Verfügbar unter: https://www.ptb.de/empir2018/smartcom/project/ [Zugegriffen: Februar. 15, 2023]; EURAMET-European Association of National Metrology Institutes, ,,Communication and validation of smart data in IoT-networks”, EURAMET, 2023 [Online]. Verfügbar unter: https://www.euramet.org/research-innovation/search-research-projects/details/project/communication-and-validation-of-smart-data-in-iot- networks [Zugegriffen: Februar. 15, 2023.] und ist seit dem Jahr 2017 integraler Bestandteil des Digitalisierungskonzepts der PTB. Der DCC bietet die weltweit eindeutige Identifikation und Speicherung der Eigenschaften eines beliebigen Kalibriergegenstandes und leistet damit mehr als den reinen Nachweis der metrologischen Rückführung. Der von der PTB prototypisch entwickelte DCC beruht auf dem Austauschformat XML und ist damit sowohl zukunftssicher maschinenlesbar als auch maschineninterpretierbar. Darüber hinaus sind alle Anforderungen der DIN ISO 17025 [DIN EN ISO/IEC 17025:2018-03, Allgemeine Anforderungen an die Kompetenz von Prüf- und Kalibrierlaboratorien (ISO/IEC_17025:2017); Deutsche und Englische Fassung EN_ISO/IEC_17025:2017, Beuth Verlag GmbH [Online]. Verfügbar unter: https://www.beuth.de/de/-/-/278030106 [Zugegriffen: Sept. 24, 2021].] berücksichtigt. Für die Darstellung von Messwerten wurde im Projekt SmartCom ein auf den SI-Einheiten basiertes Datenmodell entworfen und ein prototypisches XML-Datenaustauschformat entwickelt. Dieses als D-SI (digitales SI [D. Hutzschenreuter u.a., SmartCom Digital-SI (D-SI) XML Exchange Format for Metrological Data Version 2.0.0, 2021 [Online]. Verfügbar unter: https://zenodo.org/record/4709001 [Zugegriffen: Mär. 10, 2022].]) bezeichnete Format bildet unter anderem die Grundlage für die Angabe von Messdaten im DCC. Darüber hinaus ist es nutzbar für jeglichen anderen Austausch metrologischer Informationen. Alle Angaben einschließlich numerischer Kalibrierkurven können aus dem DCC heraus direkt und automatisiert in digitale Prozesse übernommen werden. Kryptografische Signaturen als Sicherungsverfahren sorgen für die Integrität und Authentizität eines DCC. Alle Konzepte wurden mit Partnern in Europa und der Welt diskutiert, abgestimmt und werden weiterentwickelt.