European Satellite Navigation Competition 2009

A global success story starts in its 6th year

The European Satellite Navigation Competition starts round 6 with new partner regions and other thematic focus points.

What was started in the Free State of Bavaria in 2004, has, within the last few years, matured into a global network for high-tech regions and international technical experts. With the first time participation of Switzerland, Gipuzkoa/Spain, Valencia/Spain and Øresund/Denmark and Sweden, the ESNC community already encompasses 18 partner regions. This network is strongly geared towards the requirements of the industry and, together with the partner regions, supports rapid implementation of the numerous product and service innovations from the past few years. Also the continuing support by the European GNSS Supervisory Authority (GSA) esteems the initiative for stimulating innovation and entrepreneurship in the European GNSS markets.

Under the patronage of the Bavarian State Ministry for Economics, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology, the Anwendungszentrum GmbH Oberpfaffenhofen gave the starting shot for an international ideas competition in 2004, which aimed at the early development of applications that are based on satellite navigation systems available today, for example GPS, and which should gain a significant enhancement from Galileo. With the special topic prizes sponsored by industrial and institutional partners, the ESNC has also established itself as a think tank for industry-specific needs, as 80% of all participants in 2008 took the opportunity to submit their ideas for both regional evaluation and consideration for one of the special topic prizes.

In 2009, the concept will be continued with challenges presented by T-Systems, the DLR, the GSA, the ESA, NAVTEQ, the Madrid Region and Aerospace Cluster, the Forum SatNav MIT BW as well as Anwendungszentrum GmbH Oberpfaffenhofen.

• The title sponsor T-Systems will award the most innovative applications for use in the public and health sectors.


• The German Aerospace Center (DLR) invites to provide advanced GNSS applications for enterprises and the public sector where precise, secure and interference-free signals are essential.


• The GSA will award the most promising EGNOS application idea, exploiting EGNOS`s unique features with special emphasis on the use of EDAS.


• The ESA’s Technology Transfer Programme is seeking innovative and creative business ideas, aiming at a quick market implementation and high value capture by using satellite navigation in a non-space business environment.


• NAVTEQ is looking for the most innovative developments in the fi eld of navigation and location-based services for mobile devices.


• The Madrid Region and Aerospace Cluster, together with a selected group of Spanish fi rms and institutions, will award a special topic prize for civil protection, life support, and other safety-critical applications.


• The Forum SatNav MIT BW e.V. (Forum for Applied Satellite Navigation and Mobile IT Baden-Württemberg) is searching for high-value applications exploiting security relevant features of GNSS for the logistics and transport sectors.


• Anwendungszentrum GmbH Oberpfaffenhofen will award the GMES Masters for the best downstream application based on dynamic earth observation data making use of GNSS and space and ground-based communication infrastructures.

Not only the number of partner regions has increased over the last five years from three to 18, but also the number of participants has risen from 48 in the first year to 525 in 2008. In the meantime many of the distinguished prize winners are working on the realisation of their projects.

On 1st May 2009 the ideas database for application innovations in the area of satellite navigation will be opened for the sixth time under www.galileo-masters.eu. By participating in the European Satellite Navigation Competition, you are using your chance to play a part in designing the dynamic, growing market for navigation applications and shape part of the future. We look forward to your application idea.