Sustainability-aware measurement design: How to select the right measuring system

Environmental sustainability assessment has been establishing itself as a requirement when selecting any good or service. This approach also applies to the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure, and to Measurements, which represent integral components of ICT. This means that, in the measurement design, the traditional parameters of target uncertainty and costs should be accompanied by environmental sustainability ones. To address this aspect, among the steps of the measurement design process, this paper focuses on the selection, for a given measurand, of the most suitable measuring system from a sustainability perspective. Specifically, to guarantee also consistency of the approach, the proposed methodology is developed within a framework that takes into account the pillars of measurement uncertainty (i.e. the Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement, GUM) and those of sustainability assessment (i.e. the ISO14000 family of standards). As a case study, three resistance measuring systems are compared under different simulated and experimental scenarios. The obtained results demonstrate how, through the incorporation of sustainability considerations alongside metrological performance criteria, this methodology facilitates a holistic approach to the selection of measuring systems, promoting environmentally conscious practices within the field of Metrology.