What’s new: A podcast from the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) featuring the RNTF President.
Why it’s important:
- Transportation professionals, like a lot of us, tend to take GPS for granted. They base their plans, and their day-to-day operations, on the assumption that GPS signals will always be there and be trustworthy.
- This TTI podcast can be an important way to connect with the transportation industry and improve understanding.
What else to know:
- Several years ago, the U.S. Department of Transportation sponsored a panel at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) annual conference. The panel featured the department’s chief science officer and a number of PNT professionals and discussed GPS vulnerability, PNT’s importance to transportation, etc.
- Over 40,000 people attended the TRB annual meeting that year. Less than 50 attended the panel on GPS and PNT.
- If you would rather read the conversation instead of listen, a transcript is also available at the link below.
Thinking Transportation Podcast
Episode
Episode 110. Behind the Curve? The Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation Advocates for Hardening Security for the U.S.’s Global Position System
Transcript
Allan Rutter: 00:16
Howdy everyone. Welcome to Thinking Transportation, conversations about how we get ourselves to the stuff we need from one place to another. I’m Allan Rutter with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.
Allan Rutter: 00:29
My younger brother and I learned how to read maps before we read books, owing to our mother’s dormant sense of direction. Today, I check the map on my phone before I commute in D/FW or travel between Texas cities. Those maps depend on our nation’s GPS network. The network is socially and economically critical, but it is also distressingly brittle. How the system works and might be improved is the subject of our conversation today. We have the chance to visit with a national expert in satellite-based navigation systems. Mr. Dana Goward is retired from the federal senior executive service, having served as the director of marine transportation systems for the U.S. Coast Guard, leading 12 different navigation-related business lines, budgeted at over $1.3 billion a year. He’s also a licensed helicopter and fixed-wing pilot. He has served as a navigator at sea and as a retired Coast Guard captain. With a history of that many aircraft and vessels, Dana is the Tom Cruise of the GPS expanded universe. Dana, welcome to Thinking Transportation.
Dana Goward: 01:39
Well, thank you very much. And it’s a privilege to be talking with you, especially since it’s the very first time I’ve ever been referred to as Tom Cruise. Now, Forrest Gump, that might be a more accurate comparison–showing up in all kinds of different places unexpectedly and not necessarily being sure of where you are. But thank you very much. It’s good to be here with you. Appreciate it.
