Transport and mobility services are crucial to the society that faces important challenges.
Up to date, transport facilities and services have been fundamental to economic growth.
However, there have significant and unacceptable negative impacts on the environment
including pollution, noise and climate change. Therefore, it is paramount that the
efficiency of the transport system is improved significantly including lower consumption
of energy. A way of achieving this is through the concept of smart transport that exploits
Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) technology. ITS are built on three technology pillars:
information, communication and positioning technologies.
Of the three technologies, positioning could be argued to be the least familiar amongst
transport stakeholders. However, a quick investigation reveals that there are a
wide variety of transport and related services often associated with communication
technologies that are supported by positioning. Currently, the positioning is provided in
the majority of the cases by Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), among which
the Global Positioning System (GPS) is the pioneer and still the most widely used
system. The other current fully operational stand-alone system is Russia’s GLONASS.
As these operational systems were not originally and specifically designed for transport
applications, the actual capabilities and limitations of the current GNSS are not fully
understood by many stakeholders. Therefore, better knowledge of these limitations and
their resolution should enable a much more rapid deployment of ITS.
This white paper is produced by the members of the COST Action SaPPART with two
principal aims. The first is to explain the principles, state-of-the-art performance of
GNSS technology and added value in the field of transport. The second aim is to deliver
key messages to the stakeholders to facilitate the deployment of GNSS technology and
thus contribute to the development of smarter and greener transport systems.
The first chapter highlights the important role of positioning in today transport systems
and the added value of accurate and reliable positioning for critical systems.
The second chapter is about positioning technologies for transport: GNSS and their
different aiding and augmentation methods are described, but the other complementary
technologies are also introduced.
The third and last chapter is about the management of performances inside a
positioning-based intelligent transport system, between the positioning system itself
and the application-specific part of the system which processes the raw position for
delivering its service.