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Type |
Language / syntactical evaluation of unit expressions |
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Coverage |
Unlimited / is able to express any imaginable unit of measure |
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Hosted by |
Regenstrief Institute |
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Homepage |
UCUM (Unified Code for Units of Measure) can represent any unit used in science, engineering a business for electronic communication. It provides a single coding system for units that is complete, free of all ambiguities, and that assigns to each defined unit a concise semantics.
UCUM makes use of atomic expressions representing well known base units and a syntax used to combine these atoms to more complex units if needed.
The SI/ISQ as well as other unit systems system allows an unlimited number of possible unit expressions for a single unit. UCUM is able to clearly identify a unit no matter what unit expression is used for it.
UCUM is a recognized standard in a wide field of applications and is recommended or incorporated by other standards for example the medical field (HL7, DICOM, ISO 11240), or geosciences (WMS, GML)
UCUM defines
- atomic symbols for the 7 base units of the SI / ISQ System
- symbols for prefixes used with atomic units
- a large list of symbols used for named, atomic, non-SI units
- a syntax description defining the rules used to combine the defined atomic symbols to express complex units