The GPS Innovation Alliance is a newly formed trade association that has been formed as a way to offer support, strength and guidance to the GPS Industry as a whole. Together, the group wants to be the voice of the GPS industry in the United States and support the increasing importance and advanced technology of global positioning systems. The group is dedicated to educate the public and policy makers about our GPS system, in addition to protecting the interests of users and entities that rely upon the constellation.

As GPS satellite systems grow, expand and rise in their importance in the US and globally, the GPS Innovation Alliance recognizes this importance and wants to help support, protect and enhance the use by individuals, military and commercial entities. Direct economic benefits attributable to GPS include 3.3 million U.S. jobs and $96 billion, according to the alliance.

“The GPS Innovation Alliance recognizes the ever increasing importance of Global Positioning System (GPS) and other Global Navigation Satellite System technologies to the global economy and infrastructure and is firmly committed to furthering GPS innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. The GPS Innovation Alliance seeks to protect, promote and enhance the use of GPS.”

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GPS tracking is more commonplace in businesses today than ever before. Employees are also growing more accepting of this technology as well, even though that hasn’t always been the case. When businesses first began adopting GPS tools to track employees, it was met with cries of “Big Brother” and similar rhetoric. Employee opinions regarding GPS tracking devices and tools have slowly changed over the past several years however.

Many factors are believed to have contributed to this change of employee reaction. The first factor is that more and more employers are using GPS tracking data more now than when it was first introduced into the technology world. In 2008,according to the Aberdeen Group,  a time when employee resistance to GPS tracking was much greater, only 30 percent of employers were using GPS to actively track their employees. In 2012, that number moved up to 62 percent.

GPS is being used for other purposes as well today such as to reroute when traffic is delayed, to receive turn-by-turn directions, to conserve fuel, and to achieve greater productivity in the field. These things are all especially appreciated by employees who work on commissions or need a high volume of sales in order to maintain employment. The more “calls” they can make in a day, the greater the odds of closing the deal becomes. GPS tracking and more efficient routing make that possible.

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GPS tracking research conducted by Trygge Spor, a publically Norwegian funded research study evaluating technology to track dementia sufferers, and Dag Ausen, project manager ofSINTEF, may soon help improve the safety of dementia patients. The study surveyed more than 50 people suffering from dementia for several weeks to a year.The results reveal that GPS tracking provides dementia patients with greater freedom, security, and quality of life while giving their families greater peace of mind.

Prevalence of Dementia

There were approximately 35.6 million people around the world living with dementia in 2010, according to Alzheimer’s Disease International. Those numbers are expected to double every 20 years for an estimated 65.7 million people with dementia by 2030, and then again to 115.4 million in the year 2050. In Norway, there are about 70,000 dementia sufferers. Norwegian nursing homes have approximately 80 percent of dementia patients.

Part of the reason behind these staggering increases involves the fact that people are living longer lives than ever before.  By 2050, people over the age of 60 will account for nearly 22 percent of the worldwide population. As the population for that age bracket increases, so does the incidence of dementia and Alzheimer’s.

Dementia occurs mostly with older individuals. It is a brain condition affecting memory, judgment, behavior, thinking and language. Symptoms of dementia include forgetfulness, problems with language and memory, perception issues and unusual emotional and personality behaviors. The earliest signs of dementia include becoming lost on familiar routes, trouble remembering names and not being able to perform basic tasks like balancing a checkbook.

Families of people living with dementia face many fears. One of the biggest, however, is that their loved ones will wander off, become lost or confused, and as a result, unable to find the way home.

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The constellation of satellites in our Global Positioning System (GPS) will continue to be improved and modernized thanks to the US Air Force.

The US Air Force has offered an award of $51 million dollars in the form of a contract to The Boeing Co. What’s the mission? To modernize GPS satellite constellations over the next five years: the first year is base while the following four years are optional. It includes shipment of the GPS IIF satellite in Florida, as well as preparation for pre-launch and post-launch, handover and the on-orbit support.

The newest IIF satellites have the better GPS accuracy in navigation technology. This is through technology like the advanced atomic clock technology, which is an improved military signal; one of the main reasons the US Air Force is backing the project and developments. Not only will the software and systems affecting GPS satellite constellations be modernized thanks to the award, but the project will help to keep up with the competition of other similar satellites currently in orbit.

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Both the Senate and the House of Representatives have introduced new proposed legislation that represents a bipartisan effort that would require court-ordered search warrants before law enforcement agencies are able to obtain the mobile phone location or other GPS data of suspects.

The Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act (H.R. 1312) was introduced in the House of Representatives by Jason Chaffetz, a republican representing the state of Utah along with eight other members of Congress.

“New technologies are making it increasingly easy to track and log the location of individuals. Put simply, the government and law enforcement should not be able to track somebody indefinitely without their knowledge or consent or without obtaining a warrant from a judge,” Chaffetz said in a released statement.

Ron Wyden, a democrat representing the state of Oregon, and Mark Kirk, a republican representing the state of Illinois, introduced the bill in the Senate

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