News

The coronavirus pandemic has had an impact on organisations, businesses, individuals and their families. As one of the few European Agencies delivering services 24/7, and with centres spread across Europe, the European GNSS Agency (GSA) has put various measures into place to ensure continuity of services and the security of EGNSS infrastructure, while at the same time prioritising the health and safety of staff and contractors.

The 2020 edition of the Galileo Masters opened for submissions on April 1st, seeking to award applications, services and new ideas that use Galileo and EGNOS also in synergy with other space programmes to respond to pressing needs facing business and society. The 2020 competition has three GSA challenges under the theme Space for Future Generations

Location is a key requirement when attempting to monitor and map the spread of a disease and GNSS is one of the main tools supporting this. Galileo, currently embedded in over 1.3 billion smartphones and devices worldwide, is helping to increase GNSS accuracy and availability, especially in urban areas. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus earlier this year, many apps have been developed that use GNSS location to monitor the global spread of the virus and to map outbreaks of the COVID-19 disease. GNSS-apps are also proving their usefulness by helping people to implement social distancing in queues and other public spaces.

The European GNSS Agency (GSA) joins the 2020 Global Surveyors Day, to celebrate the men and women of the surveying profession and their valuable work across a wide range of geomatics applications including land surveying (cadastral, construction, mapping and GIS, mining and infrastructure monitoring) and offshore surveying. The surveying industry and community have been an early adopter of Galileo and EGNOS leveraging on the high-precision positioning to develop new services and applications.

Registration for the 5th Farming by Satellite Prize, which aims to promote the use of EGNSS and Earth observation in European and African agriculture, will open on 16 March. If you are a young innovator with an idea for using satellite technologies to enable sustainable farming practices, improve efficiency in agriculture and reduce its environmental impact, this is your chance to win some great prizes!

Space applications in support of more efficient agricultural operations and optimised food processing in Europe will be in focus at the EO4AGRI workshop, to be held at the European GNSS Agency’s (GSA) Prague headquarters on 16-17 March.