Dear OCR Community & Friends,

I got pulled into “Standards” work back in 2007 - about the time we started OCR, when, working with community members Libbie Horn and Gayle Hurley, we were doing a literature review on the hearing thresholds of marine mammals and fishes. This was ostensibly to determine if there was a correlation between animal hearing thresholds and the “Wenz Curves,” which model ambient noise in the ocean.

We went through probably 300 published papers ~150 for each taxa. And while we were able to illustrate our point, there were no less than nine different ways that acoustical exposure metrics were expressed in the papers. Some were instantaneous exposure, some included a  time variable (dose response), some included physical dimensions (volume or distance). Some included a reference level, others did not.

So all-in-all we had a bowl of “spaghetti data” to wrestle into meaning - which we could do with about 70% of the data. The rest we had to throw out. These were "peer reviewed" papers...

It was at this point that I realized that any work we did towards informing meaningful noise exposure regulations would be futile unless everyone was working out of the same ‘standards hymnal.’ This is when I joined the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) looking for something meaningful to do.

At the time ANSI was toying with the idea of coagulating a group of stakeholders to work on noise exposure standards, but as ANSI is a member of the International Standards Organization (ISO) , I became an ANSI delegate to the ISO, who were just starting to work on underwater acoustical terminology standards. I quickly jumped on to that carousel and have been working as an ISO member ever since.

Working with the ISO Underwater Acoustic Terminology Committee (ISO 18406) was both challenging, and a delight. I was honored to be working in rooms with physicists, biologists, and acousticians who were much more facile than I in the fields of inquiry.

I can’t say I contributed a lot to the mechanics of grinding out the metrics and vocabulary of the standard, except to have introduced the term “soundscape” to the discussion (which was much too ephemeral for our physics-oriented group to take on) and “signal kurtosis,” which was taken on because it could be described formulaically. (“Soundscape” has since moved on to a different ISO standards document.)

There’s was little contention in the underwater acoustical terminology development - no more than what might be encountered in a dictionary committee choosing definitions for words. But as I was to find, applying those words to applications and practices - particularly as they might apply to manufacturing equipment, is a fish of a different color.

This is largely due to the fact that manufacturers have a financial stake in the outcome. They are also represented by a different, although collaborative organization, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). ISO and IEC can easily harmonize about weights and measures, but when it comes to practices, things can get a little wooly.

What distinguishes one manufacturer from another is how their products are used to achieve a desired outcome - practices. So if an international standard favors one manufacturer’s practice over another, it can have economic consequences - consequences significant enough that some of the IEC delegates get rewarded financially if they land a metric that conforms to someone’s particular desired practice.

This flavors the stated ISO objective of defining “formula[s] that describe the best way of doing something.” (That ever-complicated mix of science and desire…)

Due to this there were a couple of stemmy exchanges during the week. But conferring with sympathetic colleagues, they told me that this was not even close to the conflicts they have seen in the past, where voices are raised, and people get ejected from meetings.

Given that our committees remit is to inform and define standards that are biologically benign (not typically an industrial priority) I suspect I will witness some of these more combative exchanges in future meetings.

 In solidarity,

Michael Stocker

Executive Director

Ocean Conservation Research

*The graphic above is the standards architecture of a "smart" power grid" where system sensors on the lowest "physical layer" commute up the hierarchy of data management layers to the interaction and control level on a screen - what is called the "digital twin" of the top physical environment under review. This is where humans can control and tailor what is happening at the physical layer through a screen and a keyboard. 

This map also includes a yet-to-be standardized "predicative layer" that will include algorithms incorporating "Artificial Intelligence" and in this case, "Large Language Models" using the vocabulary of power generation, distribution, and consumption in the context of local, regional, and global power grids.

Our committee is working on underwater communication standards within the intersection of the standards developed in the various underwater cultivation and extraction industries. Our map is just as complex in terms of reach, but integrates the same layer structure - including the same "Modeling and Simulation" layer.

What we are advancing is a biological layer that would be the filter on the third "data communications" layer.