When the UK Space Agency and London Economics modeled what would happen if satellite navigation were switched off for a week, the results were eye opening. Their report found the UK economy would lose an estimated £7.64bn (US$10.18bn), with road transportation and logistics among the hardest-hit sectors. Here, Manuel del Castillo, VP at Focal Point Positioning, explains why global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) – which include GPS – are not just tools of convenience but critical components of modern logistics.
The calculation of a £7.64bn (US$10.18bn) hit if GNSS were down for a week highlights the importance of this technology to the economy. But for most delivery operators, the issue isn’t the total loss of satellite navigation – it’s the frequent, localized inaccuracies that arise in complex environments. Imagine a delivery driver navigating a busy city center. The building canyons bounce satellite signals in unpredictable ways, and the GNSS receiver can be off by tens of meters.
The driver might arrive at the wrong side of a block or be directed to the rear entrance of a building rather than the front door. After circling the area for 10 minutes and calling the customer, the driver eventually hands over the parcel – but the schedule has already slipped. Multiply that by hundreds of deliveries per day, across thousands of vehicles, and the cost of unreliable positioning becomes clear.
The urban canyon challenge
Accurate location data has become the foundation of efficiency in logistics. It determines route optimization, estimated arrival times, proof-of-delivery records and customer visibility. Yet in dense urban areas, where demand is greatest, traditional GNSS receivers are most likely to struggle.
Multipath interference – where signals reflect off glass, steel or concrete before reaching the receiver – can create positional errors of several meters. Trees, tunnels and even heavy vehicles can further degrade signal quality. These errors are often invisible to operators; a driver’s app may still show them on the map, even if they are tens of meters away from the correct location. The result is wasted time, rising fuel consumption and customer frustration.
The scale of the challenge is growing. The World Economic Forum predicts that the number of delivery vehicles in cities could rise by 61% by 2030, as e-commerce continues to accelerate. This growth amplifies the impact of every inefficiency. If each driver loses just a few minutes per hour to poor positioning, the cumulative effect across a national fleet is enormous, both economically and environmentally.
These challenges aren’t limited to human drivers. As logistics companies test autonomous delivery vehicles and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), the demand for trustworthy navigation data becomes even greater. For these technologies to be deployed safely and at scale, GNSS performance must be reliable in the most complex real-world conditions.
Smarter navigation for reliable logistics
At Focal Point Positioning, we’ve focused on addressing these challenges directly. Our S-GNSS technology enhances the accuracy and reliability of existing GNSS receivers, improving their ability to handle signal reflections, interference and spoofing. Crucially, this is achieved through software, without the need for new hardware, allowing logistics operators to upgrade performance across existing fleets.
The result is positioning data that is not only more accurate but also more reliable. With improved signal processing, S-GNSS helps ensure that every location fix represents the vehicle’s true position with a reliable associated confidence level, even in the most challenging urban canyon environments. For logistics operators, this translates into tangible efficiency gains: fewer missed turns, reduced idle time and more predictable delivery schedules.
Reliable positioning also strengthens the broader ecosystem that supports logistics. Regulators, insurers and fleet managers increasingly expect operators to verify their data integrity. As autonomous systems mature, the ability to prove where a vehicle was – and to do so with confidence – will be essential to safety, compliance and public trust.
The efficiency of global logistics now depends on the quality of invisible infrastructure in orbit above us. The UK Space Agency’s findings highlight the national value of GNSS, but on the ground it’s the micro-failures that quietly erode productivity every day. With smarter, more resilient satellite navigation, logistics operators can reclaim those lost minutes, cut costs and improve customer experience – turning urban canyons, which were once unreliable situations for logistics systems, into scenarios where those systems continue to work seamlessly without disrupting the delivery chain.