Activities of GNSS in the International Maritime Organization (IMO)

The IMO sub-committee on the safety of navigation (NAV) met in September 1995 in a two week session, one of which was a special intersessional working group (ISWG) to study the provisions of a future civil and internationally-controlled global navigation satellite system (GNSS). The NAV meeting studied the features of the available GPS and decided to recommend accepting GPS-SPS as a component of the world-wide navigation system, based on assurances presented by the United States Coastguard. The Russian Federation stated that they intend to offer GLONASS to be considered as a further component. This development enables mandatory carriage requirements to be drawn up for radionavigation systems on SOLAS ships, probably from 1999. The NAV meeting also noted the increasing global provision of differential GPS signals from marine radio-beacons to provide augmentation to GPS. The ISWG studied the work on GNSS which had taken place within ICAO and to which IMO had been invited as observers. The group then studied operational requirements and institutional arrangements with regard to the maritime requirement. The conclusions are given.