What Do Standards Have to Do With It?
A Call for Participation in the Future of Acoustical Standards
When most people hear the word standard, they probably don’t think about airplanes, classrooms, hearing tests, environmental noise, or emerging acoustic technologies. They may think of a technical document sitting on a shelf but standards aren’t really about documents. They’re about confidence.
Confidence that when we measure something, we know what we’re measuring. Confidence that two laboratories can perform the same test and produce comparable results. Confidence that manufacturers, regulators, researchers, engineers, practitioners, and users are working from a common understanding. And perhaps most importantly, confidence that the standard itself reflects current science, technology, measurement practices, and real-world needs. That’s why standards development isn’t something that should happen in isolation. It needs the people who use the standards.
What do standards have to do with it?
Consider something as familiar as aircraft noise.
New international aircraft noise requirements are being developed with the goal of reducing noise from future aircraft. But establishing a noise limit is only part of the equation. How do we know how loud an aircraft actually is? How do we make sure measurements made by different organizations can be compared? What equipment and procedures should be used? What happens when measurement technology changes? Standards help answer those questions.
Standards provide the common methods, terminology, criteria, and measurement practices that allow us to move from “we measured something” to “we can have confidence in what that measurement means.” The same principle applies across acoustics. A standard can influence how we measure sound in a community, evaluate the acoustical performance of a school, conduct a hearing test, determine sound power, characterize underwater sound, or describe data collected through passive acoustic monitoring. In each case, the standard becomes a shared foundation.
But a standard is only as strong as the process behind it.
The acoustics community is changing. New technologies are changing what we can measure. New applications are creating questions that didn’t exist when some standards were first developed. Research continues to expand our understanding of sound and its effects—and the people who rely on standards are changing too. That means standards must change as well.
ASA Standards continually develops new standards and reviews existing ones to determine whether they should be revised, reaffirmed, or withdrawn. This ongoing work helps ensure that the standards used by the acoustics community remain technically sound and relevant but that work cannot—and should not—be done by standards developers alone.
We need you at the table.
A successful consensus standard needs the participation of the people who develop it, use it, are affected by it, and have a material interest in its outcome. That includes the experts who bring technical knowledge to a working group but it also includes organizations that depend on the standard in their work.
Manufacturers, testing laboratories, consultants, researchers, government agencies, regulators, professional organizations, practitioners, equipment manufacturers, and learning institutions
whose interests may be directly affected by the standard. You don’t have to be a standards expert to have something valuable to contribute. In fact, one of the most important perspectives may come from someone who can say, “This is how this standard works—or doesn’t work—in the real world.”
Participation isn’t just about writing the standard.
There are many ways to contribute. You can participate in a working group developing or revising a standard. You can bring technical expertise or practical experience to the discussion. You can review proposed changes. You can provide comments during public review. And, where your organization meets the applicable participation requirements, you can participate in the consensus process and vote on standards. This last point is important.
Voting isn’t simply a final step in approving a document.
It is one of the ways stakeholders help ensure that a standard represents a meaningful consensus among the interests affected by it.
Your organization may have experience that the developers don’t. You may see an application that others haven’t considered. You may identify a problem with a proposed method. You may know that a particular requirement works exceptionally well—or that it creates an unintended problem in practice. Those perspectives belong in the standards process.
Why should your organization participate?
Because standards can affect the way your organization works. They can influence measurement methods, testing practices, product development, regulatory programs, research, procurement, compliance, and professional practice. If a standard matters to your organization, your organization’s voice can matter to the standard.
Participation also gives stakeholders an opportunity to understand how a standard is developed and to contribute before decisions are finalized. Rather than encountering a new or revised standard after the fact, participants can help shape the document while there is still an opportunity to influence its content.
Standards need more than experts. They need stakeholders.
Technical expertise is essential but consensus requires more than technical expertise. It requires a diversity of perspectives. The person developing a measurement method may approach a problem differently from the person manufacturing the equipment used to make the measurement. A researcher may see an issue differently from a regulator. A consultant applying the standard in the field may encounter challenges that aren’t apparent during development. A laboratory may identify practical considerations that aren’t obvious from the theoretical requirements. Those differences aren’t a weakness in the process. They’re the reason the process works. Bringing those perspectives together helps create standards that aren’t simply technically defensible—they’re usable.
The world doesn’t stand still. Neither should our standards.
The acoustics community is continually encountering new questions related to new aircraft, buildings, measurement technologies, sources of environmental noise, approaches to hearing assessment, ways of collecting and analyzing acoustic data, and new applications for acoustics that we couldn’t have imagined when some existing standards were first developed .
Keeping standards current ensures that they continue to serve the people who rely on them but keeping them current requires participation. It requires people willing to ask questions. People willing to share expertise, willing to challenge assumptions, willing to test whether a requirement works in practice and organizations willing to bring their real-world interests and experience into the consensus process.
Your voice can help shape the standards of tomorrow.
If your organization has a material interest in an acoustical standard, we invite you to participate. If you’re an acoustical expert with knowledge to share, we invite you to join a working group. If you’re a stakeholder who uses, applies, tests against, regulates, researches, manufactures, or is otherwise materially affected by an acoustical standard, we invite you to engage in the standards process. Because standards aren’t created for the sake of creating documents. They’re created to solve problems, establish common ground, and provide confidence. And the best standards are built when the people who depend on them help build them.
The future of acoustics is changing.
Let’s make sure our standards are ready for it—and make sure your voice is part of the conversation—get involved. Learn more about ASA Standards, current standards activities, working groups, public reviews, and opportunities to participate: https://asastandards.org/.
We need your interest, expertise, experience, and voice. If you have questions about where your expertise or organization’s interests fit within the standards process, contact us at standards@acousticalsociety.org.