Associate members representing key GNSS user communities – including the US, Russia, European Union, China, India, and Japan – met at the 3rd meeting of the International Committee on GNSS (ICG-3), a voluntary UN backed association that brings together GNSS and augmentation providers. An appeal for collaborative efforts that would move beyond interoperability to “interchangeability” was made.

U-blox supplying GPSS for Longcheer chinese handsets
Chinese mobile phone designer Longcheer Holdings Ltd will integrate Swiss chip maker u-blox’ single chip UBX-G5010 GPS receiver into a series of handsets. The models built incorporating the device, the G600, G800, and G630 have just become available while the G801 and G900 are expected to begin shipments to the Chinese market later in this quarter. www.u-blox.com

Dr R Siva Kumar CEO National Spatial Data Infrastructure on status and directions of NSDI in India

We are not hearing much about NSDI? What is the status of NSDI?
The vision behind NSDI is to make data available and accessible. Keeping this objective in mind policies and framework are formulated. Various aspects of …

LCNSS is better than GNSS
María D Laínez and Miguel M Romay
Engaging young minds in designing future cities
Shubhra Kingdang
Couldn’t we predict the Wenchuan Earthquake with GPS?
Shunji Murai and Harumi Araki
Meeting the demand of real-time positioning
Lars Jamtnas and Bo Jonsson

The Wenchuan Earthquake occurred in Sichuan Province, China on the 12th May 2008 with M 8.0 in Richter Scale and 10km depth which resulted in more than 90,000 dead and missing. It is reported that the total loss is more than 170 Billion US Dollars…

The competition started nearly two decades ago in the United States as the National Engineers Week Future City Competition with the aim to provide fun and exciting educational engineering programs for school students by combining stimulating engineering challenges with ‘hand-on’ application to enable them to present their vision of a city of the future…

EU developing ‘militarised’ space policy which could trigger ‘arms race’
The European Space Agency is accused of developing technology to dominate the “high ground” of space, including a multimillion pound EU Satellite Centre in Spain. The Transnational Institute, a Dutch think-tank, said: “EU-financed communication and spy satellites are slowly becoming reality and in the long term the inclusion of space-based missile defence and other more offensive uses of space are real options for an increasingly ambitious EU military space policy.” The report said French ambitions for the “militarisation of space” have led to arguments with Britain – particularly over Galileo, the much-delayed European global positioning system. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who currently holds the Presidency, said in June that space agenda was one of his priorities. Galileo would be vital in any European deployment of the sort of GPS-guided artillery now being used by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan

Demand for Satellite Navigation technology and applications keeps on increasing in a wide range of economical, social, technological and environmental sectors. This growing interest in the development of Satellite Navigation Systems is demonstrated by the interest of several countries in starting the development of new systems or contributing to existing ones. The major rational behind is…

PIL demands removal of country’s images from Google Earth
Public interest litigation was filed in the Bombay High Court in India, has taken exception to easy access to satellite images of the vital installations in the country through Google Earth. The petition filed by Mumbai-based lawyer Amit Karkhanis has demanded removal of images of the country from Google Earth. The petition is filed against the backdrop of terror attacks in Mumbai. The petition is likely to come up for hearing on December 18.

Coastal navigation upgrade
The UK’s General Lighthouse Authorities (GLAs) have awarded a £4m contract to VT Communications for the upgrade of 14 Differential Global Positioning Service reference stations. The upgrade includes adding the capability to use modernised GPS signals that will be needed for tracking the future satellite navigations systems, Galileo and GLONASS. www.vtplc.com