RTI International, sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, released a report stating that a nationwide GPS outage would result in a $1 billion per day impact in critical industries. The report, titled “Economic Benefits of the Global Positioning System (GPS),†also found that the economic impact of a GPS service loss would be 50 percent higher during the planting season in April and May due to the agriculture sector’s widespread deployment of GPS-based technologies.
A GPS outage would greatly impact location-based services as well as telecommunications and telematics operations such as fleet management and logistics, according to the report. In addition, the maritime sector would face losses totaling around $10 billion especially between the months of June and September.
“GPS is not just a service; it is also a platform for innovation. With the support of federal agencies, private enterprise has leveraged GPS to deliver value through precision agriculture, advanced logistics and route optimization, high-speed wireless services, and a host of other applications,” the report stated.Â
RTI studied the impact of GPS technologies from 1984 to 2017 to industries such as telecommunications and telematics, precision agriculture, electricity, location-based services, maritime and mining, oil and gas, professional surveying and financial services.
