Measurement uncertainty of turbine flow meter calibration used in conformity assessment for water management

Water management is a relevant activity for society, for industry and for consumers, requiring transactions based on measurement. To ensure confidence to all users, a high level of measurement quality is required to enable conformity assessment to be acceptable in the definition of market conditions by the stakeholders. The practical implementation of conformity assessment to equipment requires the definition of decision rules, on acceptance or rejection of its performance, depending on the accuracy of measurements. Liquid turbine flow meters are common equipment used to measure flow velocity and volume of water in many water supply systems. To approve the use of this type of equipment it is necessary to provide measurement traceability and to evaluate and use the measurement uncertainty in the applied decision rules. This paper describes a new framework to use measurement uncertainty obtained by calibration in the definition of decision rules for conformity assessment.