On the 14th and 15th of September, the 55th meeting of the Civil GPS Service Interface Committee (CGSIC) conference was hosted by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center (NAVCEN) at the Tampa Convention Center in Florida. DOT serves as the civil lead for GPS and chairs the CGSIC in this capacity. NAVCEN is assigned duties as Deputy Chair and Executive Secretariat for the CGSIC.
On September 14th, the Timing, States and Local Government, International Information, and Surveying, Mapping, and Geosciences subcommittees of the CGSIC held their meetings. A summary of their subcommittee meetings was presented to the CGSIC Plenary on September 15th.
The Keynote speaker for this year’s CGSIC Plenary meeting was the Honorable Gregory Winfree, Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology, at the U.S. Department of Transportation. The agenda for the CGSIC Plenary meeting included presentations on the operational status and modernization of the GPS constellation of satellites, U.S. space-based PNT policy, GPS augmentation systems, and information related to international Global Navigation Satellite Systems.
Several new briefings were part of the Plenary session this year, including presentations from the 19th Space Operations Squadron that provides GPS Launch, Anomaly and Disposal Operations (LADO), from NASA on space missions and their success in using GPS side lobes for space navigation beyond Geostationary orbit, and from Airservices Australia detailing progress in providing a Global Tracking capability in the wake of the missing Air Malaysia MH370 aircraft in the Indian Ocean. The Department of Homeland Security also provided an informative briefing that included discussion of use of Space-Based PNT in Critical Infrastructure and strategies for managing PNT risk.
Many thanks to the 2015 CGSIC speakers for their excellent presentations which always make these meetings valuable and interesting, as well as great questions from the audience. This year, 220 attendees participated in the CGSIC meeting. All CGSIC presentations are available for viewing online via the GPS.gov website: http://www.gps.gov/cgsic/meetings/ .
Next year’s 56th CGSIC meeting will be held at the Portland Convention Center, 12-13 September 2016 in conjunction with the ION GNSS+ 2016 meeting in Portland Oregon. Additionally, the CGSIC States and Local Government Subcommittee will meet on November 19, 2015 in conjunction with a Field Technology for Data Collection in Forestry, Fisheries, and Natural Resources Conference in Portland, Oregon. This meeting will be webcast and details will be circulated prior to the event to foster maximum participation from around the country. The CGSIC International Information Subcommittee will meet on November 16, 2015 in conjunction with the International Symposium on GNSS in Kyoto, Japan.
As a reminder, CGSIC meetings are free and open to the public. Finally, GPS-related inquiries or reports of signal interference/degradation problems can be made to the U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/?pageName=gpsUserInput or 703-313-5900.