Tibetannet

LHASA, Oct. 1 (Xinhua) -- Beidou, a domestically engineered satellite navigation system of China, started to serve its second largest provincial region of Tibet on Monday.

A Beidou-supported information platform made a debut in Lhasa, capital of Tibet Autonomous Region. It is expected to provide services in disaster alert and relief, emergency rescue, transportation, agriculture, forestry, water conservancy, as well as targeted poverty reduction and smart travel.

"We will accelerate the development of Beidou navigation industry and its application in Tibet," said Qin Zhenhua, chairman of the Tibet Xingchuan Beidou Satellite Navigation Platform Co., Ltd.

Tibet occupies about one eighth of China's land area with 3.17 million people. Beidou meets the urgent need from the sparsely populated region.

Named after the Chinese term for the Big Dipper constellation, Beidou is a rival to the U.S. GPS system, Russia's GLONASS and the European Union's Galileo as a global satellite navigation system.

China launched its first Beidou satellite in 2000.

Beidou, with 38 satellites, will provide danger alerts and navigation services for global users after the successful launch of two satellites on September 19.

Beidou was listed on a global satellite search and rescue implementation plan in February by COSPAS-SARSAT, an international satellite system for search and rescue.