Brussels, 14/06/2010 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 4 June, the Commission adopted its Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) Applications Action Plan, which “aims to place European industry in pole position to take full advantage of the global downstream market worth about €100 billion in particular by using its own satellite navigation programmes, Galileo and EGNOS (European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System),” says the Commission in a press release.
Hitherto, and despite Europe's investments and the availability of EGNOS, uptake of GNSS applications in Europe has been slow. Moreover, the share of the European industry in the worldwide GNSS applications market is low. The limited usage of applications based on EGNOS and GALILEO leads to critical dependencies from military-inspired GNSS that are beyond European control.
Through the 24 action points listed in the plan, the Commission will co-ordinate activities in this area. This means that, for the period up to 2013, the action plan will be focused on the following domains in particular to take advantage of the improved accuracy of EGNOS: applications for individual handsets and mobile phones; road transport; aviation; maritime transport and fisheries; precision agriculture and environment protection; civil protection and surveillance. Among other things, the European Commission will: - allocate €38 million worth of FP7 funding to a broad spectrum of research proposals on GNSS application in 2011; - seek certification of EGNOS for aviation including Safety of Life (in conjunction with Eurocontrol target aircraft manufacturers, general aviation and small airports); - investigate possibilities for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and seek certification of Galileo for Intelligent Transport Systems while also targeting the road transport community; - promote Galileo and EGNOS-enabled chips and handsets; - establish an International EGNOS & Galileo Application Forum where users, developers, infrastructure managers and systems providers can exchange views on feeding into the evolution of the GNSS project.
The European Commission also emphasises the need for further EU R&D funding for GNSS applications in order to foster the development of applications based on EGNOS and Galileo, thereby ensuring Europe's independence from foreign, military-controlled systems. (O.J./transl.rt)