The number and mass-market utilization of application and services leveraging position information is facing continuous and exponential growth. Beyond the “commoditization” of position information in all mobile services, due to the extremely easy access of this features by developers and the availability of standardized open APIs and protocols facilitating direct use of position from application, this phenomenon is especially influenced by several market-related, social and technical macro-trends.
On the one hand, the wide availability of GNSS-enabled devices eases the growth of the entire eco-system of location-based solutions also beyond personal applications. This represents a unique opportunity for mass-market adoption of Galileo technologies, as the first devices able to support multi-constellation and hybrid positioning are starting to be marketed by the most innovative vendors, but it is also interesting to observe that, while the GNSS-enabled devices market is currently dominated by Smartphones, it is also seeing the steady growth of new types of GNSS-enabled devices, such as sport trackers and wearables, which will likely result in increased opportunities in the future.
On the other hand, statistics show that the device market, despite very large, will likely be just a very small fraction of the market potential of added-value data-oriented services that are enabled by the availability of position information in devices.
Beyond the market-related aspects, location-based applications, also used in conjunction with gamification techniques, are considered especially important from the social point of view, being considered a pioneering way to create awareness on sustainability problems and putting in place collective solutions, as stimulated by EU initiatives on Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation.
Due to such huge economic, social and strategic potential, the domain of location based applications is clearly a “golden target” for malicious users and hackers willing to profit from potential gaps in such services e.g. to disrupt operations, gain rewards maliciously or profiting by lack of privacy features or the location-based mechanics of these applications.
Damages resulting by e-security threats on these types of mass-market systems are perhaps physically less dangerous compared to damages caused by GPS spoofing or other attacks to navigation systems e.g. targeting the disruption of air traffic or vehicles autonomous driving features. Nonetheless the potential financial losses, as well as the potential business opportunities lost because of the lack of trust in such technologies is potentially gigantic.
These problems are far from being solved: a scalable, adaptive e-security solution, able to secure and provide privacy by design in massively distributed, mass-market applications in a way that is able to work across different technology platforms, economically sustainable, easy to integrate and not hampering with user experiences is still missing.
The Breakthrough targeted by GOEASY is to provide the technical and business foundations to enable a new generation of trusted and dependable mass-market Location-Based Services (LBS) and Applications for engaging, stimulating and rewarding citizens for more sustainable behaviours. This will be done by establishing an open eco-system built upon unique Galileo features (such as increased trust and improved availability) and leveraging open standards and platforms enablers to federate with existing authentication and e-security services, the Internet of Things (IoT), Smart City and Collective Awareness Platforms (CAPs).