EGNSS applications

Specific challenge: European society and industry are facing new challenges, requiring more innovation, productivity and competitiveness, whilst using fewer resources and reducing environmental impact. GNSS offers various possibilities for the development of new space enabled applications, which will enhance Europe's capacity to address major societal challenges in focus areas such as health, citizen safety, mobility, smart cities, sustainable resources monitoring and management, regional growth, low-carbon energy infrastructure planning and protection, disaster management and climate action including natural catastrophes.

Satellite navigation provides continuous, real-time, reliable, accurate and globally available position, velocity and time. The technology fits important societal and market needs.

Scope: Proposals should aim at developing new innovative applications, with future commercial impact. The topic addresses application development in all market segments, such as: transport (road, rail, maritime, aviation), high precision surveying, location based services (LBS),  agriculture, emergency services etc responding to user requirements. Application development should be seen in a broad context - it includes the development, adaptation and/or integration of new software, hardware, services, datasets, etc.  The use of EGNOS and Galileo Early Services is a key priority for this topic.

Research and innovation activities within this topic should take into consideration possibility of:

1.      Exploitation of synergies with other space-based services and systems in order to enable multi-use character of EGNOS and Galileo-enabled applications in all market segments,

2.      Exploitation of the distinguishing features of EGNOS and Galileo signals and operational advantages in downstream applications,

3.      Preparation for the use of early services, ensuring a greater precision and availability of signals,

4.      Implementation of pilot projects for further development of EGNSS based applications,

5.      Standardisation, certification, legal and societal acceptance, which will foster EGNSS adoption.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 1.5 and 4 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected impact: Activities should promote innovation in order to maximise the potential of the European GNSS and its adoption. They should demonstrate a clear advantage of using Galileo and EGNOS and include synergies with other GNSS. Proposals should aim at the definition and implementation of pilot projects and development of the EGNSS-enabled applications that are close to the market and driven by user requirements with a high societal benefit and a potential to eventually set common standards in the field of GNSS applications. The proposal should have a clear intention and rationale to commercialise the products and services developed, including a business plan.

Release of practical tools to the GNSS developer community, ideally with free open source license, is of particular interest.

Type of action: Innovation actions