UK over reliant on GPS

[+Mark+Karen]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12668230

[+The Blorenges]

Still got a road atlas in the car and MrsB and I still know how to map read and use a compass!!

 

Chris (MrB)

[+goldpot]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12668230

 

This is what was said on this report;

 

UK 'dangerously dependent on GPS'

 

The UK is already "dangerously dependent" on the GPS satellite navigation system, a report by engineers has claimed.

Back-up systems are often inadequate, while equipment which can illegally jam systems is easily and cheaply available, the report from the Royal Academy of Engineering added.

With Global Navigation Space Systems (GNSS) affecting such things as road, rail Geocaching and shipping equipment, a system failure could "just conceivably cause loss of life", said Dr Martyn Thomas, chairman of the academy's GNSS working group.

 

He went on: "The UK is already dangerously dependent on GPS. GPS and other GNSS are so useful and so cheap to build into equipment that we have become almost blindly reliant on the data they give us.

"A significant failure of GPS could cause lots of services to fail at the same time, including many that are thought to be completely independent of each other."

The report said that GNSS is vulnerable to deliberate or accidental interference, with people jamming systems or equipment being affected by solar flares.

Sometimes faulty information from a system failure is so wrong that it would be easily spotted, the report said.

 

But it added that the real threat lies in "dangerously misleading" results which may not seem obviously wrong. In such a situation, a ship, say, could be directed only slightly off course by faulty data but could then be steering into danger or Geocachers could end up not finding any caches at all, worst, fall off the edge of a cliff whilst trying find these plastic boxes.

Helping to launch the report, Bob Cockshott, of the Digital Systems Knowledge Transfer Network, said there is a whole generation of road users who cannot read maps and cannot operate without satnav.

He went on: "Dependency on GPS is growing and jammers are getting easier to obtain. We expect this problem to become more severe."

Edited March 8, 2011 by goldpot

[+daddykeeper]

Dangerously dependent on a whole lot of systems. Never mind the GPS unit in the police car/ambulance whatever, the radio systems now in use by the emergency services rely on the mobile phone network, their vehicles rely on oil, their control rooms rely on electricity, the list of technologies that are relied upon is endless, GPS is kind of low on the list.

 

Want to confine to to say aircraft? well then TCAS is just as easy to disrupt, and even worse, different parts of the world rely on that ssytem in different ways, so it is already a great potential danger, some nations teach pilots to obey TCAS over air traffic control, where others teach the other way round.

 

Yet more slow news day scaremongering.

[+NickandAliandEliza]

Yet more slow news day scaremongering.

 

Got it in one.

[+Lime Candy]

Sat-nav does bring its own set of problems though. I know someone who got a delivery van stuck under a low bridge, because they thought the satellites up above could actually see the van, measure its height, and would not send it down a road with a too-low bridge!

[+Guanajuato]

Sat-nav does bring its own set of problems though. I know someone who got a delivery van stuck under a low bridge, because they thought the satellites up above could actually see the van, measure its height, and would not send it down a road with a too-low bridge!

Sat Navs can't be blamed for someone being a complete idiot. Low bridges are signed. If they are unable to read the signs approaching and the one on the bridge, then maybe, just possibly they SHOULDN'T BE DRIVING AT ALL!

The usual failure of the Nut Holding the Wheel. 2 or 3 artics get stuck on Red Bank between Grasmere & Loughrigg every year, despite there being lots of signs that its unsuitable, and its pretty obvious at the junction in Grasmere and at the Elterwater end that its unsuitable - in fact to GET to the start of the road must take some significant effort. But that doesn't stop the ***Edited offensive remark*** trying anyway. THEY ARE PAID TO DRIVE AND SHOULD BE CAPABLE OF MAKING DECISIONS. That's like an engineer not being able to do sums, or a linesman not knowing the offside law. Personally, I reckon any driver who blocks a road due to such idiocy should be liable for the cost of recovery. Grrrrr.

 

To make it relevant, I can recommend the caches around Loughrigg!

Edited March 9, 2011 by geohatter

[+Amberel]

Yet more slow news day scaremongering.

 

Got it in one.

The fact that it was reported may or may not be because of there being not much else going on that day, but the report itself isn't scaremongering.

 

The problem isn't people losing their satnavs - that is pretty insignificant compared to the other potential problems.

 

The whole world is getting heavily interdependent in lots of ways, and it means the consequences of a failure in one system can have far reaching and major effects on other systems. It's GOOD that people are thinking about this and trying to reduce the risks.

 

You can be sure that the same people who deride this would complain that "it shouldn't have been allowed to happen" if something does go wrong.

 

Rgds, Andy

[+Pharisee]

That's like an engineer not being able to do sums....

As an engineer of one sort or another for all my working life and with responsibility for other engineers for the last dozen or so years, I KNOW that there are engineers who can't do sums (without the aid of a calculator) and some of them can't write sensible English either! The old joke still holds true.... "6 months ago I couldn't spell 'Engineer'... Now I are one!"

[+NickandAliandEliza]

Yet more slow news day scaremongering.

 

Got it in one.

 

You can be sure that the same people who deride this would complain that "it shouldn't have been allowed to happen" if something does go wrong.

 

 

That's an assumption and a half.

 

I already know the sky is going to fall in. I read it in the Daily Mail.

 

PS - I wasn't deriding the research - just the way the article highlights certain aspects of it and what was said.

Edited March 9, 2011 by Nick & Ali

[+Amberel]

That's an assumption and a half.

 

It's not an assumption, it's an observation - I hear the same people complaining whichever way round things are.

 

PS - I wasn't deriding the research - just the way the article highlights certain aspects of it and what was said.

Can you be more specific? It seemed pretty balanced and uncontroversial to me.

 

Rgds, Andy

[+Guanajuato]

***Edited offensive remark***

Sorry. I assumed anyone would take it as the tongue-in-cheek reference it was obviously intended to be.

[+Team Noodles]

As an engineer of one sort or another for all my working life and with responsibility for other engineers for the last dozen or so years, I KNOW that there are engineers who can't do sums (without the aid of a calculator) and some of them can't write sensible English either! The old joke still holds true.... "6 months ago I couldn't spell 'Engineer'... Now I are one!"

 

thats it, were domed!