Does The UK Rely Too Heavily on GPS?
Date: Wednesday, January 31 @ 10:54:37 UTC
Topic:
We're not talking about driving here - even though I would hazard a guess that most drivers these days rarely use a map or know how to use a compass... But does the UK infrastructure rely too much on GPS?
The government think it might and are now reviewing the risks of becoming too reliant on GPS and how they can get a back-up system in place. A previous report estimated that 5 days of GPS disruption could cost the UK over £5 billion - that's certainly not to be sniffed at!
One obvious effect, if Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) such as GPS were disrupted, would be on the emergency services. GPS is used to dispatch ambulances and police as well as tracking the location of emergency services. It would mean no satnavs for deliveries and regular drivers. What about security firms transporting large sums of cash - they wouldn't be as easy to track. Aircraft and ship safety could be compromised leading to the shutdown of air and sea ports - vital parts of the economy.
However, GPS isn't just about location and navigation. GPS relies on atomic clocks that give incredibly accurate times (that's how your receiver works out where you are) and these times are used by financial institutions as well as the National Grid. The accurate times from GPS are used for accurate timestamps on financial exchanges and for synchronising the transmission of energy between electricity substations.
Jamming devices are relatively easy to come by and in recent years we've seen a rise in use of them on a major scale for example in the Black Sea sending ships off-course. One of the things the UK government will be looking at are ground-based back-up systems.
"We must take steps to increase the resilience of our critical services in the event of GNSS disruption, including by adopting potential back-up systems where necessary," the minister for implementation, Oliver Dowden, said in the report. "We will carefully consider the findings and recommendations as we continue to improve the resilience of our critical services to disruption," Dowden added.
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