| Practice area: | Downstream Terrestrial Applications | Space |
|---|---|
| Client: | UK Space Agency |
| Published: | 18 October, 2023 |
| Keywords: | UK Economic analysis GNSS GNSS loss PNT Space UK Space Agency |
Daily life in the UK is underpinned by signals from satellites orbiting in space. People and businesses across the entire economy rely on infrastructure called Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), often called āsatellite navigationā, to determine their position, velocity, and time. Many critical sectors depend on GNSS, in many cases without their explicit knowledge. This reliance has developed over decades, based on assumed availability and continuity of GNSS signals.
This reliance comes with its own drawbacks as it slides towards over-reliance. Given the substantial use of GNSS in the UK, and the vulnerability of the systems to failure, it is important to understand the impact on the UK to a disruption of GNSS functionality.
This question was first explored by London Economics in a June 2017 report, āThe economic impact to the UK of a disruption of GNSSā, commissioned by InnovateUK with the UK Space Agency and the Royal Institute of Navigation (RIN). This new report was written in 2021 and examines the benefits of GNSS to the UK economy, the impact of loss of GNSS for a 7 day period, the impact of loss of GNSS for 24 hours, and two more localised disruptions to GNSS around critical transport infrastructure. In addition, this 2021 updateĀ improves the accuracy and scale of GNSS benefits and estimated losses for seven priority sectors: Agriculture, Aviation, Emergency Services, Finance, Maritime, Rail, and Road, as well as providing a more general update of all other sectors covered in the previous study. The impact on these sectors was considered to have changed significantly since 2017, as there is greater use of GNSS in those sectors and, in some cases, better data available to estimate impacts.
The benefits of GNSS to the UK economy were estimated to be Ā£13.62 billion per annum.
The impact of a loss of GNSS for 7-days was estimated to be Ā£7.64 billion and economic impact of a loss for 24 hours was estimated to be Ā£1.42 billion.
Figure 1: Share of 7-day economic loss, by sector
The sectors that accounted for the greatest proportion of the impact were Emergency Services, Maritime and Road Transport, which between them account for 87.6% of the losses from a 7-day outage.
Details of key findings for each sector are provided in the Final Report and Executive Summary linked above.