A rather interesting project was discovered on the Internet. GPSJam is a world map that demonstrates problems in the global positioning system. The service was launched on February 14, 2022, and has already recorded some changes on the map caused by the outbreak of a full-scale war against Ukraine.

How it works: In every aircraft, an ADS-B transmitter broadcasts information about the aircraft’s board number, location, altitude, speed, and other data. This information is collected in real time by specialized receivers, which then use services such as FlightAware or FlightRadar to track flights. It is the GPSJam service that takes the flight database from ADS-B Exchange, processes data on navigation obstacles and plots consolidated information on the map Mapbox.

The developer emphasizes that the data cannot be unambiguously interpreted as a complete lack of navigation in the specified area, only as certain obstacles experienced by the aircraft in a certain period of time. The service also declares that it does not show which positioning system failed, but it is mostly GPS. More answers are on the website.

The author of the project is John Wiseman, who has a hobby of developing aircraft tracking projects and analyzing their behavior. His previous project, the Advisory Circular network of twitter bots, publishes real-time alerts when it detects suspicious planes flying in circles.