EGNOS: A Cost-Effective Solution for GIS

The European GNSS Agency together with ESSP demonstrates the improved accuracy of EGNOS at the annual ESRI user’s conference in Spain. 

The GSA, along with the European Satellite Services Provider (ESSP), recently presented success stories on EGNOS and ArcGIS at this year’s Conferencia ESRI España, the annual Environmental Systems Research Institute user’s conference in this country.

The Environmental Systems Research Institute (+ESRI) is an international supplier of GIS (Geographic Information System) software, web GIS, and geodatabase management application, holding about 40-percent of the global market share. At the conference, the GSA was able to demonstrate how EGNOS’ architecture and services work in real mapping situations.

Using the Barcelona Port Cartographic Institute measurement campaign as an example, the Agency together with ESRI showed how EGNOS improves GPS accuracy. Surveys of ports and harbours cover a range of topographic elevations and hydrographic depths to assess the condition of navigation channels. These assessments help quantify and determine dredging requirements, and the conditions of navigation structures such as jetties, breakwaters, and the adjacent shoreline.

The Barcelona Port Cartographic Institute wanted to check if EGNOS could fulfil the requirements put in place by the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) to perform bathymetries. Typically, the data used to make bathymetric maps comes from an echo sounder mounted under or on the side of a boat, which ‘pings’ a beam of sound towards the seafloor. Next, a GNSS system positions the soundings with respect to the surface of the earth.

In this example, data was collected from an EGNOS compatible Leica GNSS system. After analysing the data collected using EGNOS, analysts found that the service accomplished the requirements of Surveys 1a (waters more than 40 meters deep), 1b, and 2, according to the IHO, in offshore bathymetrics.

The GSA, ESSP and ESRI also presented a case study from the beach of El Prat, a zone of high interest due to its constantly changing coastline – a result of dumping sand. The data accuracy of measurements collected from GPS and EGNOS signals were compared, using ZenoCollector, a solution from Leica Geosystems. ZenoCollector combines a high-accuracy data collection Zeno 20 device with another tool, the Collector for ArcGIS. The latter system allows data to be automatically synced online, where multiple people can view it instantly.

Results of both projects showed that EGNOS considerably improves GPS accuracy for free. For municipalities and organisations hoping to obtain more accurate results, all that is needed is an EGNOS-compatible requirement, and the vast majority are so. What was clearly demonstrated at the conference was the ease, benefits and cost-effectiveness of EGNOS for GIS.

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