Building Links between Europe and South-East Asia in the Field of EGNSS: the BELS Project and the NAVIS Centre

South East Asia is growing at an impressive pace with its GDP having increased by about 350% in ten years, rising from 650 Billion $ in 2002 to about 2300 Billion $ in 2012. Regional governments actively promote infrastructure, logistics and service development to create a favourable environment for sustainable growth. Within this framework, GNSS applications play a vital role. In particular, the increasing demand for better services, in both the public and private sector, and logistics is going to require increasingly reliable and trusted GNSS applications. South East Asia has the highest multi-GNSS coverage in the world, and is therefore the ideal place to test and compare performance and opportunities offered by the different global navigation satellite systems. On the one hand, an active promotion of EU GNSS (EGNSS) technology in this region, rising awareness on its main features while on the other hand facilitating the linking of European enterprises with South East Asian GNSS stakeholders, are extremely important so as to establish and maintain global European scientific and industrial leadership in this crucial sector. Indeed, it is also fundamental to encourage the penetration of EGNSS industry into the South East Asian market taking into account all potential applications of EGNSS. Therefore, the BELS project exploits the opportunities presented by the NAVIS Centre, an International Collaboration Centre for Research and Development on Satellite Navigation Technology in South East Asia based in Hanoi, Vietnam, to promote visibility and to raise awareness of EGNSS technology in the region. The next three years will be crucial for paving the way for Galileo services, both for European companies that can enter a new growing market and for the South East Asian countries that can discover the capabilities of the EGNSS technology. Consequently, BELS facilitates and supports the visits of European companies for such purposes as carrying out tests in the NAVIS Centre and hence to assist them in getting ready for the global GNSS applications market.