Quantitative Assessment of the Impact of GNSS Threats on Governmental Applications and Receivers (“QUASAR”)

M. Dumville, F. Fryganiotis, W. Roberts, J. Hammond, M. Trosh, C. Dixon, S. Hill, P. Lindsay

Abstract:	GNSS is a tool that is widely used globally across UK government departments, agencies and critical national infrastructure. The use and dependence of GNSS varies across the UK user community; ranging from location based services, to tracking and tagging through to safety critical transport operations and timing within critical infrastructures. Many of the user organisations are aware that GNSS is not perfect. They are also aware of the increasing threats to GNSS based operations. The vulnerabilities of GNSS are widely documented but there is limited hard evidence to support some of the claims. The lack of facts is stifling the wider adoption and use of GNSS within risk adverse organisations. It is critical for the GNSS community that both governmental and commercial users of GNSS develop an awareness of their dependency on GNSS, the threats to GNSS and impact of degradation or denial of GNSS on their business operations. This is essential to ensure UK public services remain safe and secure. In doing so, it will help to ensure that GNSS is established as the backbone to deliver position, navigation and timing (PNT) services to UK government policies, critical national infrastructure and commercial applications. The QUASAR project (“Quantitative Assessment of the Impact of GNSS Threats on Governmental Applications and Receivers”) was proposed with the sole purpose of addressing this challenge. The objective of the QUASAR project was to develop an outline methodology to quantify the impact of loss of GNSS on real-world operational services. The methodology should be applicable to a range of users, with different applications and various levels of technical understanding. QUASAR completed its work in June 2015 and has delivered an outline methodology which has been developed during the course of the project which provides a systematic assessment of a GNSS based service or application. The methodology is generic and can be readily applied to any government or commercial user of GNSS to quantify the loss of GNSS in relation to the application under consideration. In addition to the development of the methodology, QUASAR validated the methodology with the support of 3 UK government users of GNSS, namely: • Ordnance Survey – national mapping agency of the UK • National Grid – energy grid provider for UK • Police – National Road Policy unit The paper details the work done to develop and validate the QUASAR methodology and software tool.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 28th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2015) September 14 - 18, 2015 Tampa Convention Center Tampa, Florida
Pages:	1608 - 1616
Cite this article:	Dumville, M., Fryganiotis, F., Roberts, W., Hammond, J., Trosh, M., Dixon, C., Hill, S., Lindsay, P., "Quantitative Assessment of the Impact of GNSS Threats on Governmental Applications and Receivers (“QUASAR”)," Proceedings of the 28th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2015), Tampa, Florida, September 2015, pp. 1608-1616.
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