Australia is looking to GPS and inertial sensor technologies as the basis for a modernized train management system, using Lockheed Martin to help develop it. The company has received a US$74.8 million contract from the Australian Rail Track Corporation Ltd. for the proofof-concept phase of the Advanced Train Management System (ATMS).

The soaring food price in recent months has been unprecedented.
Increased food prices could lead to increased poverty and unrest.
Even, UN call …

Solving the GPS gap
Antonio Angrisano, Armando Pacifico, Mario Vultaggio
Government policy, applied research, commercialization…
Dr. Robert A. Ryerson, Chanchai Peanvijarnpong
VLBI geodetic precision with different models
Erhu WEI, Jingnan LIU, Peijing PAN
Going deeper undergroundl
Marc Hobell, Jim Stancliffe

Beneath our feet in the UK lies a vast labyrinth of millions of kilometres of buried pipes and cables, delivering key products and services essential to our social and economic well-being. These networks of buried assets need repair and maintenance, and the growing demands of the UK economy mean that in years to come the networks will continue to grow significantly, as will the amount of traffic on the streets under which many of these assets lie.
There are now more companies involved in digging holes across the UK than ever before. Latest estimates put this figure at around 4 million holes dug by utility companies annually, and this excludes any excavations made as part of construction projects and works away from the street. Every time a hole is dug it impacts on traffic and the local environment. Often, holes turn out to be ‘dry’ – inaccurate information means that assets thought to be there cannot be found.

Says, lisa Campbell, Vice President, Geospatial Solutions, Autodesk Inc

 
Tell us about autodesk’s geospatial solutions
Autodesk provide solutions to design, …

Galileo and GPS systems to work together

The UK government has published the agreement between it and fellow European governments, and the USA, over the promotion, provision and use of the Galileo and GPS systems.

After many years of wrangling, the Galileo project was finally given the go-ahead by the European Union back in December 2007. Galileo is intended to be an independent alternative to America’s GPS. As recently as the year 2000, the US only provided limited access to GPS to the general public.

Both the United States and the EU signed an agreement way back in June 2004 that GPS and Galileo signals would be interoperable, but it has taken several years for the agreement to be approved by member states. www.techworld.com

Sergey Revnivykh, Deputy Director General, Head of PNT Information Analysis Center of the Central Research Institute of Machine …

ESP SAS formed

ESSP SAS has been recently formed in Rome with objective to become the certified service provider for EGNOS. The Headquarters will be in Toulouse having two units: the Service Provision unit in Madrid and Operations in Toulouse. The negotiations between the European Commission and the EOIG experts have reached a conclusion on the EGNOS Agreement and foresee to initial the Agreement in the coming weeks.michel. calvet@aviation-civile.gouv.fr

China to investigate Google for illegal maps

China has launched an investigation into online mapping services by Google and Sohu in an effort to protect state secrets and territorial integrity. According to vice head, State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping, authorities hope to get rid of online maps that wrongly depict China’s borders or that reveal military secrets. The government began the investigation into the problematic maps in April and will continue it until the end of the year. Min cited five areas of concern – Taiwan, the Spratlys and Paracels island chains in the South China Sea and the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. http://afp.google.com/

Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) is the unique space
geodetic technique which can provide the Celestial Reference Frame (CRF), the Terrestrial Reference Frame (TRF) and the relationship between the two frames — Earth Orientation Parameters (EOP) at the same time. VLBI has a widely usage in space geodetic, ground
geodetic, geophysical fields and so on. Presently, it can determine the position of the radio source outside the galaxy with 1mas precision, and determine several kilometers length of baseline on the earth’s surface with 1cm precision. Due to its high stability and high precision character, the Celestial Reference Frame outside the galaxy based on VLBI has been the best realization of the quasi-inertial referenceframe since 1980s. VLBI stations are the most important benchmarks in the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF), and VLBI is one main supporting technique which determines EOP. Till now, space and ground VLBI have accumulated more than 20 years’ data. They provide continuous and long-term data guarantee for space geodetic, ground
geodetic and geographical research.