UK 'over-reliant' on GPS signals, engineers warn

The UK may have become dangerously over-reliant on satellite-navigation signals, according to a report from the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Use of space-borne positioning and timing data is now widespread, in everything from freight movement to synchronisation of computer networks. The academy fears that too many applications have little or no back-up were these signals to go down. Receivers need to be capable of using a variety of data sources, it says.

Dr Martyn Thomas, who chaired the group that wrote the report, told BBC News:

"We're not saying that the sky is about to fall in; we're not saying there's a calamity around the corner. What we're saying is that there is a growing interdependence between systems that people think are backing each other up. And it might well be that if a number these systems fail simultaneously, it will cause commercial damage or just conceivably loss of life. This is wholly avoidable."

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source: BBC