EURAS Proceedings 2020

The annual EURAS Conferences bring together academics from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds, representatives from national and regional standards bodies, and government agencies, and company representatives. They all share an interest in standardisation reseach and education. The papers presented at EURAS conferences address a broad variety of issues relating to standards and the underlying standardisation process. These include, among many others, standardisation policies, the economics of standardisation, participatory, legal and regulatory issues, as well as the history and the future of standards and standardisation.

The theme of the 25th EURAS conference was 'Standards for Digital Transformation: Blockchain and Innovation'. But – like many other such events, the conference fell prey to the Covid-19 virus. Accordingly, these 'proceedings' represent a compilation of many of the papers that would have been presented.
Blockchain technology is believed to have the potential to transform a variety of industries by reshaping the way to conduct trusted, yet anonymous transactions and to ensure the irreversibilty of records (with associated issues). It is little surprise that the financial sector has already shown considerable interest in the application of this technology, with applications envisaged in many other sectors like health care, energy and logistics. Blockchain applications have also been discussed for legal metrology as well as for standards setting.
Blockchain is an emerging technology and its standardisation is still at an early stage. However, numerous standards bodies have become active in the field. Likewise, Open Source implementations are under development. Considering the disruptive nature of Blockchain technology, issues to be associated with the developemnt of common standards and specifications go way beyond the mere technical challanges. They also require the alignment of diverse stakeholders' interests and the collaborative design of core principles and practices.