GNSS Vulnerability & Mitigation in Czech Republic and Slovakia
Last Updated: 08/05/2023 10:34 Created at: 08/05/2023 10:30
Final Presentation of NAVISP Project EL3 003 now available:
On Thursday, May 05th, 2023, GNSS Centre of Excellence presented, together with its consortium partners from Huld s.r.o. and the Research Institute of Posts and Telecommunications the results of the NAVISP EL3 003 project "GNSS Vulnerability & Mitigation in Czech Republic". About 50 people from industry and research institutes followed the interesting presentation and the subsequent interactive Q&A session.
As GNSS signals are vulnerable to intentional or unintentional interference that can jeopardize smooth operations, there is a great need to increase the resilience of GNSS systems to ensure their use, especially in critical infrastructures. In this context, the objective of this project was to support Czech and Slovak activities related to the assessment of GNSS vulnerability and mitigation with a focus on the national critical infrastructure (CI). This required detailed information on the stakeholders using GNSS/PNT and the infrastructure operators relying on GNSS/PNT, as well as a vulnerability assessment for each infrastructure operator and field validation of GNSS/PNT threats. In this context, the following activities were conducted within the scope of the NAVISP EL3 003 project :
- A complex overview of the use and dependence on GNSS in CI as well as an analysis elaborating on the potential impact of GNSS RFI on each CI sector
- 6 monitoring campaigns in the proximity of critical infrastructure
- 5 testing campaigns evaluating the resilience of selected critical infrastructure systems
In total, over 40 individual companies from seven different sectors were identified as regular users of GNSS data and thus potentially impacted by GNSS interference. Subsequently, monitoring campaigns were conducted at Prague (LKPR) and Brno (LKTB) airports, Czech and Slovak highways, inland waterways, and the Czech electricity transmission network. These campaigns showed that RFI events were detected daily in all monitored areas. Test campaigns followed with the aim of evaluating the resilience of selected CI systems (railroad, aviation, inland waterway and laboratory tests) using multiple jammers and spoofers.
Based on the results of these actions, mitigation measures, in form of 18 recommendations for CI operators and government agencies could be formulated, representing the first step towards building CI resilience.
During the project, the GNSS Center of Excellence, together with its consortium partner, was able to provide assistance to government institutions in mapping all fragmented knowledge, technologies, activities and projects ongoing in the Czech Republic and Slovakia related to GNSS/PNT vulnerability and protection of (critical) infrastructures against RFI threats. This will help CI operators and government institutions to understand the extent and actual impact of GNSS RFI. Moreover, this will in turn help CI operators to gain knowledge and expertise on remedial actions and protection of the operated infrastructures.
The next step will be to further explore the results of this project, e.g., in various follow-up activities, including the development of a prototype for the detection of RFI in road traffic and a collaboration with national inland waterway authorities to conduct further tests of the automatic identification system.
The project was part of NAVISP Element 3, aiming to support national PNT strategies by providing support per country and possibly per domain for the development and promotion of products, applications and services based on PNT systems to foster national and international cooperation.
More detailed information can be found in the slides of the final presentation here.