EGNOS and Galileo for regulated Tracking & Tracing services: The MENTORE project

The European Union has already established a number of regulations requiring precise, reliable and up to date knowledge of geographic position. In the near future, current policies may evolve towards regulating further activities. These regulations take advantage of satellite navigation applications, commonly grouped under the term "Tracking & Tracing", as a tool to localise and remotely monitor assets and persons. The Commission has recently presented a "Green Paper on Satellite Navigation", defining a framework for satellite applications, including "Tracking and Tracing" in regulated domains. With the advent of EGNOS and Galileo, "Tracking & Tracing" services are expected to develop rapidly, taking full advantage of the new systems' features. MENTORE (iMplemENtation of GNSS tracking & tracing Technologies fOR Eu regulated domains) is a project managed by the GSA, through 6th Framework Programme funds. The project objective is the definition of a roadmap for GNSS technologies and services in the regulated Tracking & Tracing market in order to: • Support the application of regulations already in place • Accelerate the process of set-up of regulations presently under development/discussion • Identify the needs of further regulatory activity from the initial introduction of EGNOS to the future implementation of Galileo. In two years, the project analyses the technologies, service platforms, market scenarios and the service provision schemes of EGNOS/Galileo based Tracking & Tracing regulated services, in the context of the European Union policies. MENTORE will demonstrate five Pilot Services in this field of applications and will use the outcomes of the demonstrations for the definition of the roadmap. The paper aims at presenting the MENTORE project and its results.