PNT Resilience for Local Services

What is GNSS/PNT?

PNT is location and time data broadcast by GNSS (GPS) satellites.

GNSS: Global Navigation Satellite System
PNT: Position, Navigation and Timing

Source: UK Government Office for Science, Blackett Review (2018).

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The uses of GNSS

It sets traffic signal timing, routes ambulances, and synchronises emergency alerts, mostly invisibly.

A 5-day GNSS outage is estimated to cost the UK £5.2bn,
yet no research maps who actually bears that loss.

London Economics (2017) quantified the cost to transport and emergency services; the impact on residents and local services remains unmapped.

Challenges

How can we ensure that local authorities recognise PNT disruption as a key challenge?

I identified the problems that arise from public services' dependency on PNT.

(01)

Invisible Dependency

A local service's dependency on PNT is hidden and stays invisible until something breaks.

(02)

Limited Awareness

Local authorities have little to limited awareness of their own PNT dependency.

(03)

Tech-Heavy Checklist

The existing PNT Resilience Checklist is tech-heavy, built for specialists rather than the officers who actually need it.

Research Findings

To make PNT matter to local authorities, 
I first needed to understand what local authorities already prioritised.

An internal impact-mapping workshop and 3 local authority interviews surfaced their priorities and blind spots.

01

Service Delivery as a Priority

PNT becomes more relevant when framed through its impact on everyday service delivery.

“In terms of time and budget,
we’ve got to deliver these services day in and day out.”
- Interview from council stakeholder

02

Unclear PNT Risk Ownership

Local authorities own service outcomes, but responsibility for underlying PNT risks is unclear.

“We have a legal duty in many cases…
as an organisation [we] have to deliver these services.”
- Interview from council stakeholder

Workshop outputs — participant-written response stories across service operator and civilian perspectives.

Building hypotheses through role-based storytelling

With limited existing user research, I designed an internal storytelling workshop to generate provisional hypotheses before speaking with local authorities. Across three scenarios, participants used personas to explore what different actors would prioritise, how they might respond, and where their actions could create knock-on effects.

What this changed

Research shifted the framing

FROM
How might local authorities assess PNT resilience?
TO
How might we make PNT risk relevant through the services local authorities are responsible for delivering?

This moved the project from assessing a technical risk to helping teams recognise its impact on service delivery and ownership.

The hypothesis:
If local authorities can map the societal impact of the PNT failure, then they might include PNT loss in their risk response plan and prepare for potential PNT degradation.

Design and Delivery Approach

Turning findings into design principles

I translated the research into 3 principles that shaped how teams move from identifying a relevant service to understanding its dependency, impact and ownership.

(01) Start with the service, not the technology
Begin with a familiar service outcome before introducing PNT dependency.

(02) Make hidden dependencies visible
Use guided questions to uncover dependencies across information, systems and suppliers.

(03) Make ownership an explicit outcome
Help teams identify who should own the next step rather than assuming responsibility is already clear.

From awareness to action

Artefact 1 — Screening Tool

Designing a low-barrier entry point

I designed the screening tool as a short sequence of service-level questions rather than asking users to identify PNT dependencies directly. Each question progressively reveals whether location, navigation or timing information could be critical to service delivery.

PNT Dependency Check
Identify potential PNT dependencies before further assessment

The tool provides a short, sequential guide across four questions, helping users consider potential PNT dependencies and determine the most appropriate next step for each service.

Start with what users know
Begin with the service and information it needs, rather than asking about GNSS.
Progressively reveal dependency
Move from information need → its role → technology/supplier dependency → service impact.
Avoid false certainty
A “no” does not permanently rule out dependency, users are given triggers for when the service should be reassessed.

Artefact 2 — Facilitated Framework

Turning hidden dependencies into a shared conversation

Once a service was identified as potentially PNT-dependent, I designed a facilitated canvas to move teams from a familiar service outcome towards dependency, consequence and ownership. Each stage combines open discussion with a single statement, turning an ambiguous conversation into an explicit output the team can act on.

PNT Service Impact Canvas
Explore how PNT failure could affect service delivery

The question set was developed by analysing the RIN Resilient PNT Checklist and tailoring its underlying logic — dependency, confidence, consequence, ownership — into plain-language,
scenario-led prompts that don't assume prior GNSS knowledge.

01 Anchor the discussion in an outcome → Service Outcome Statement
“What must this service reliably deliver?”

02 Reveal the dependency → Dependency-chain Statement
“What does the service need to know, and where does that information come from?”

03 Make consequences tangible → Impact Chain Statement
“What would people notice first, and what happens next?”

04 End with ownership and action → Action Statement
“Who is accountable, who needs to be involved, and what happens next?”

Implementation Strategy

Rather than build a new PNT governance layer,
the toolkit routes evidence through the structure local authorities already trust: Local Resilience Forums.

The project sits at the delivery tier, but is designed to send local insight upward, through LRF coordination and sector learning, into national policy and investment, while national guidance gives local action greater legitimacy in return.

Proposed Value

This Toolkit gives local authorities a starting point before disruption forces the issue.

Shared with the National PNT Office at both the start and end of development, it's proposed as a first step within existing risk and resilience processes, not a replacement for them.

Limitations

Further institutional and empirical validation is required.

Local services can fall outside CNI scope
PNT resilience is largely framed at national and infrastructure levels. How responsibility extends into everyday local public services remains unclear.
Unvalidated scale of dependency
The research surfaced potential PNT dependencies, but their wider prevalence remains unknown. The canvas identifies dependencies; it does not measure their scale or severity.

Lesson Learned

Made visible in their own terms

The biggest lesson wasn't technical, it was about making an invisible risk feel relevant. PNT dependency was real, but nobody felt it, so the project only moved once I stopped explaining PNT as a specialist risk and started framing it through service delivery, the language local authorities already used to justify their time and budget.

That shift changed how I built every artefact after it. The Screening Tool's four questions and the Canvas's plain-language prompts weren't simplified versions of the RIN Checklist, they were translations of its underlying logic into a vocabulary a non-specialist could actually act on. I learned that communication in service design isn't about clarity for its own sake; it's about finding where a stakeholder's existing priorities and the problem you're introducing meet.