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Over the past few months, we have published a number of articles highlighting how GNSS is contributing to technological advancements in various transport sectors. Mobility Week is a good opportunity to look back at these and summarise how Galileo and EGNOS are enabling the intelligent transport applications that underpin the mobility solutions of the future.

Following the first Space for Innovation in Rail conference, held in Vienna back in March, we had a number of articles on the contribution of space to the modernisation of the rail sector. One of these featured leading Italian rail infrastructure manager Rete Ferroviaria Italiana (RFI), an early adopter of the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) and a company that has been quick to appreciate the benefits of using satellite positioning in the rail sector.

GNSS and the ERTMS are perfect complementary assets that can together considerably reduce rail operational costs. However, with new technologies such as GNSS, obstacles still remain to ensuring interoperability and open standards, and these obstacles require solutions to be developed by all stakeholders involved. This is something that the ERSAT (ERTMS on Satellite) project, co-funded by the GSA, aims to address.

Watch this: EGNOS and Galileo for Rail

This project targets the integration of GNSS positioning and public telecommunications over the ERTMS platform and is making an effective roadmap to allow others to follow a step-wise operational deployment. The ERSAT project has field-tested and demonstrated the capability of satellite-based positioning embedded within the ERTMS ecosystem. This has caught the eye of many train operators in Europe and beyond.

Boosting customer services

Once such operator is French national rail company SNCF, which is taking the lead in adopting Galileo technology to boost customer services, in particular in its high-speed TGV network. The company is already embracing GNSS-based systems, especially for passenger information, and fleet and traffic management. “At the beginning of 2019, some 250 high-speed trains were already equipped with Galileo-ready receivers. This represents nearly 50% of SNCF’s TGV fleet. Some 320 trains are expected to be Galileo-ready by the end of 2019,” said Antoine Barre, head of train localisation projects at SNCF. SNCF aims to equip its entire train fleet with Galileo receivers to assist non-safety relevant train localisation, and also plans to further investigate the future contribution of European GNSS within the ERTMS.

And this: Driving with Galileo

Supporting Mobility as a Service

The benefits of EGNSS stretch beyond the rail sector, however. New urban mobility schemes are rapidly evolving due to social, economic and technological changes and, against this backdrop, Galileo can deliver new accuracy and reliability for location-dependent services that get people where they need to go. This is supported by the omnipresence of smart mobile devices, which is allowing new business models to emerge based on the sharing of goods and services - the so-called sharing economy.

The Galileo 4 Mobility project is working to promote the introduction of Galileo technology within the MaaS context by analysing the geolocation needs of the different stakeholders involved and demonstrating the benefits of Galileo through pilot demonstrators of shared mobility services. GALILEO 4 MOBILITY encompasses a number of MaaS-oriented pilots, including a ride-sharing service in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Changing the way we fly

It is not just land-based transport that is benefiting from space-based solutions. In aviation too, EGNSS is also helping make transport cleaner, safer and more accessible, EGNOS and Galileo contribute to landing, surveillance and Search and Rescue operations, and actions targeting every aviation user. These benefits of EGNOS were in focus at the AERO International General Aviation Fair at Friedrichshafen, Germany, back in May.

And this: EGNOS for Aviation

At the event, Julian Scarfe, deputy chairman of PPL/IR – Europe, the leading group for private pilots across Europe interested in instrument flying, spoke about easier access to instrument flight rules for general aviation through the use of EGNOS and localiser performance with vertical guidance (LPV). "Today we have EGNOS that can enable vertical approaches to non-instrument runways. The GSA is running a project to enable this. This will change the way we fly," he said.

Likewise, in an interview with GSA, AirBaltic’s Senior Vice President for Flight Operations Pauls Cālītis spoke about how EGNOS is enabling the E-GEN project and the ’green flying’ concept, helping the airline to improve its efficiency  and reduce its environmental footprint and the level of emissions and noise that it produces.

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).

The European GNSS Agency (GSA) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) have signed an agreement to cooperate on supporting investment in the European space-based service economy. The agreement was signed as part of celebrations at GSA headquarters in Prague on September 10 to mark the Agency’s 15th anniversary.

With the new agreement, the GSA and EIB are bringing together their expertise and experience to explore new investment support for the European space-based economy. The common objective is to create high-skilled jobs in the EU and improve the day-to-day lives of Europeans by supporting innovative companies and accelerating the development of new applications that use European global navigation satellite systems and earth observation data.

Read this: GSA celebrates 15 years

European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs Elżbieta Bieńkowska has noted several times the critical importance of adequate funding for the future of the European space industry. "Access to finance remains a significant hurdle to unleashing the potential of European space entrepreneurship within and outside Europe,” the Commissioner said. This new agreement between the GSA and the EIB will help to overcome this hurdle.

Keeping Europe in the game

“Our expertise in market intelligence for satellite navigation and in supporting new business opportunities – thanks to EGNOS and Galileo – is the basis of our agreement with the EIB,” said Carlo des Dorides, GSA Executive Director. “We are confident that our cooperation will bring the extra added value required by entrepreneurs to transform their application businesses into globally successful companies.”

“We need to make sure that Europe stays in the game. That is why we are particularly enthusiastic about this agreement with GSA. It is an important step to develop further support for European space entrepreneurs and businesses to eventually give them and the EU a competitive edge in this new space race,” said EIB Vice-President Ambroise Fayolle, responsible for innovation.

A changing space sector

The global space economy has been evolving rapidly in recent years, with average annual growth of 6.7% over the past 10 years, which is almost twice the 3.5% average yearly growth of the global economy. The main driver of this growth has been the “New Space” phenomenon: a number of technological and business model innovations that have introduced new products and services and reduced the cost of accessing and using space.

And this: GSA celebrates 1 billion Galileo smartphone users

The transformation of the space economy has seen new space companies investing over EUR 14.8 billion since 2000, with a fast accelerating trend: total investment in space companies grew by a factor of 3.5 in 2012–2017 compared with the previous six-year period.

Historically, Europe has always been at the forefront of publicly-funded space exploration, investing massively in space infrastructures such as the Copernicus and Galileo satellite programmes. Europe still boasts academic and scientific excellence but risks missing the next wave of space innovation unless it seizes the opportunity to stimulate more private investment in the new space sector. This is something that the new agreement between the GSA and the EIB aims to address.

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).