Parking Gets IoE Smart

Ooh! That gal’s pulling out…Wait, Wait! If I can just get over 2 lanes…Ahhh, quit yer honking! NO WAY!!! That hotshot in the red convertible just stole my spot! Now I have to go around the block again…!

You know you’ve been through this and you’ve probably also been behind someone trying to get across 2 lanes to capture a spot and causing mayhem. It’s estimated that 30% of all traffic congestion in urban areas is caused by drivers circling and struggling to find a parking spot. With cities growing at an estimated 10,000 people per hour, the situation isn’t going to get any better unless we make some changes.

Solving the parking madness

Cities–perhaps yours–can now implement a new Internet of Everything solution — Cisco Smart+Connected City Parking — to help alleviate many of their parking (and resulting traffic) headaches. The solution not only serves spot-seeking drivers, but can also support traffic enforcement officers to locate violations more easily, generate more revenue from citations, and reduce vandalism and other safety issues via video surveillance. Finally, the solution provides date to city operations centers to improve planning and development decisions.

Cisco ruggedized routers rule

Built around a special ruggedized Cisco gateway router (CGR), the City Parking solution combines sensors, video, routers and other hardware and software technologies developed in conjunction with Cisco partner Streetline. The CGR’s ruggedized housing allows it to be mounted outdoors, from where it transmits the parking, traffic and safety-related data captured by intelligent embedded sensors and video cameras, which, when analyzed, gives a richer picture of the daily parking drama unfolding across the city theater.

Reading between the lines

Roadway sensors–in combination with CGR and Smart+Connected City Wi-Fi–are great for determining if an “demarcated” parking space is occupied or not, but the bigger challenge is in detecting occupation within “undemarcated” spots – say, along a long, loading-zone curb or in a no-parking area. For that, video is the way to go. With video added into the configuration, the solution generates a whole lot more data. And in order to process that video feed, a wired fiber or Ethernet connection–optimized for the particular network set up–is required.

A smart combination

By bringing together cutting-edge technologies with expertise and creativity, Cisco and its partners are serving up an end-to-end architecture that can make a real impact on the day-to-day challenges that cities face today.

See a demo of Smart+Connected City Parking at Cisco Live San Francisco May 18 – 22!

For information on IoT and related presentations, solutions, and activities at Cisco Live, please visit Cisco IoT Solutions at Cisco Live US 2014.