This, and the following three papers, were first presented at GNSS 2000, the Third European Symposium on Global Navigation Satellite Systems held in Edinburgh, Scotland from 1st to 4th May 2000.

This paper presents the methodology and a practical implementation approach to perform GNSS Safety Assessment and Certification with due consideration of the satellite navigation system users. It places Galileo GNSS in a total system that includes vehicles, on-board equipment, crews and traffic controllers and defines the necessary organisation for implementing safety analyses right from the early design phases of navigation systems. Civil aviation has very demanding requirements based on objectives for air navigation safety. It is much better organised on a worldwide basis than other GNSS users and is considered in this paper as the leading study case. Some methods are then proposed to build a bridge between all user organisations and to set up a common approach to certification.