In many critical areas today navigation is more concerned with maintaining the flow of traffic than with finding the way. In his Presidential Address, which was presented at the Annual General Meeting of the Institute in London on 14 October 1970, Mr. Stratton discusses some of the characteristics of sea and air traffic systems and how they interact with the costs and benefits to the community as a whole.

In my previous address I concentrated on the way in which new scientific principles have been applied to determining the basic quantities of position, course and speed as inputs to the navigation process and with some of the technological problems encountered. The science and technology of navigation, however, are but the means by which navigation fulfils an operational task which itself is directed at the safe and expeditious movement of passengers and goods or to some military ends. In this address I will concentrate on some of the current and future operational tasks for navigation on the sea and in the air in fulfilment of the commercial need to transport goods and passengers and of the personal use of the vehicle for transport and leisure.