Sleepwalking to disaster: why we need to act now on navigation systems
Words: Peter Taylor-Whiffen
The landscape
The principles of PNT – positioning, navigation and timing – have been with us for ever. They are essential to everything we do. But as science, technology and innovation have developed, we increasingly need ever more sophisticated PNT systems to deliver data. Space science and technology, in the form of Global Navigation Satellite Systems such as the United States’ GPS, now plays a fundamental role in this, underpinning the UK’s 13 sectors of Critical National Infrastructure (CNI), including food, water, health, transport and emergency services. Professor Washington Yotto Ochieng, Head of Imperial’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chair in Positioning and Navigational Systems, and Senior Security Science Fellow at the Institute for Security Science and Technology, was a key designer of the EU’s satellite-based navigation programmes EGNOS and Galileo – but warns that since Brexit, we no longer have guaranteed access to these and are potentially “sleepwalking to disaster”.
“As systems have got more complex, we now need to think about designing PNT systems within systems (systemof- systems),” says Ochieng. “These days we have to look at the entire value chain. Think about, say, food sector logistics – someone needs to find land, till it, fertilise, grow whatever they grow, harvest it and transport it to a supermarket: each stage needs PNT and all stages need to fit with each other. As the applications of PNT have grown in terms of stringency of the performance needed, so too has the science, technology and innovation to deliver performance in terms of the four required navigation performance (RNP) parameters – accuracy, integrity, reliability and continuity.” This need for higher performance, he says, means we can no longer rely on one type of technology, and need to
The challenge
“As systems have got more complex, we now need to think about designing PNT systems within systems (systemof- systems),” says Ochieng. “These days we have to look at the entire value chain. Think about, say, food sector logistics – someone needs to find land, till it, fertilise, grow whatever they grow, harvest it and transport it to a supermarket: each stage needs PNT and all stages need to fit with eachother. As the applications of PNT have grown in terms of stringency of the performance needed, so too has the science, technology and innovation to deliver performance in terms of the four required navigation performance (RNP) parameters – accuracy, integrity, reliability and continuity.” This need for higher performance, he says, means we can no longer rely on one type of technology, and need to combine terrestrial with space-based technologies to build resilience into the system. “But no automatic access to EGNOS and Galileo, which we rely on for our space-based PNT, leaves us vulnerable. It’s essential for our national security but also our CNI – and many other applications. “There are other systems owned by Russia, China and the US and, as with the EU satellite programme, we are currently allowed access to them. But it’s not guaranteed – they are provided at our own risk with the real potential for denial of service. There’s always the potential that, say, for political reasons we wake up one day and the US has switched off GPS. Essentially our CNI is close to entire dependency on technology owned by other people.”
The response
I’ve made it clear to government that we are currently very vulnerable"
Ochieng is lobbying and advising politicians – he gave evidence at a recent UK Parliament Science and Technology Committee meeting focused on UK space strategy and satellite infrastructure, and has recently been invited to contribute to policy talks with Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Paul Monks, who is co-ordinating the government’s PNT strategy. “My job is to tell government how urgent this issue is,” he says. “I am providing evidence in terms of impact and pressing them to understand that time is of the essence. The UK cannot sit in a silo on this, it needs to reach out. Hopefully they will understand it from the CNI perspective, but the effect on their constituents may also play a part – what would their constituents’ response be if they thought their MP was responsible for a lack of phone signal, or if their satnavs no longer work?”
The future
Ochieng adds: “CNI requires a resilient layer, and we don’t have access to that. The UK has to decide one way or the other whether it is going to own its own PNT capability or to work with others to ensure that mission-critical applications are covered. Economically, the UK is quite capable. A study by London Economics said that if we lost GPS, we’d lose £1 billion a day, so investing in our own sovereign systems would be cost-effective. But we need it soon. I’ve made it very clear to government that we are currently extremely vulnerable.”
Professor Ochieng is Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.