GNSS Safety of Life Services: Towards a Safer and More Effective Use of European Transport Networks

Abstract

EGNOS and GALILEO will allow for the introduction of safety-critical services for the various modes of transport, either by means of accuracy and availability enhancements and/or through the integrity messages. Galileo will indeed offer a dedicated signal called Galileo Safety of Life (SoL). After a brief introduction of the overall European transport context and the corresponding European Commission (EC) White Paper policy for the current decade, the paper provides a description of the main charactenstics of the safety-related applications and the Galileo SoL service features which meet these needs. A brief summary of the on-going EC/ESA projects, dealing with the SoL applications, is also provided. The paper provides an overview of the market forecast and a discussion of the plan for the activities required to prepare the EGNOS and Galileo user segment for the SoL users.