Double Parking Issues

The Smart Partnership

A group of researchers from Advanced Telecommunication Technology Research Group (ATT), Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Edward Chan Kam Fai, Gan Yi Reng, Leow Tan Chun Kit and Dr. Kamaludin Mohamad Yusof aims to solve one of the most problematic issues in cities i.e. illegal parking! The researchers also wanted a better way to manage the sensors and develop applications, and thus, they chose FAVORIOT as the IoT platform.

The Issues of Illegal Double Parking

Illegal double parking is one of the primary cause of horrible traffic congestion in many city centers. A visit is conducted from StarMetro to hotspots like Taipan Business Centre, USJ 10, Subang Jaya shows that road user blatantly ignored the No Parking and Towing Zone signboards that aimed to prevent double parking. Although Subang Jaya Municipal Council (MPSJ) has issued a total of 25,270 compound notices at 2012, the problem still hasn’t come to cease. In a report, from World Bank 12th Malaysia Economic Monitor, Malaysian typically motorist in Kuala Lumpur spends more than 250 million hours per year in traffic congestion. Traffic congestion in Kuala Lumpur also cost over RM3,100 per motorist or over 1.1% of national GDP annually for the country. Of course, Malaysia is not sitting idly with respect to this situation.

For example, as Cyberjaya braces for the influx of population by 2018, we need to start resolving current city administration issues for better management of traffic flow. At the same time, the lack of parking space in open and public parking areas within Cyberjaya has resulted in teething congestion problems during peak hours. Lack of enforcement manpower by the local council and growing double parking problems is a common sight within Cyberjaya.  The City Innovation Council is actively discussing and reviewing ways to optimizing innovative technology to resolve teething city problems and increase the quality of life in Cyberjaya.

There are many initiatives by public and even private sectors to cope this problem. Building a robust public transport, encouraging cycling culture and introducing smart traffic light system, these are the efforts to alleviate the situation. Activation of smart social solutions by resolving city administration problems such as double parking using public empowerment, connected things, and communications technology. With more installation of sensors and smarter city applications in place, more opportunities for

We would like to see how technology can be designed to resolve a double parking problem by empowering the public, building management, and local council to cooperate by means of Internet of Things (IoT) or mobile smart devices. With more installation of sensors and smarter city applications in place, more opportunities for the smart city urban public services will be made available.

Figure 1.0 Operation Flow of ParkKing

The Solution – ParkKing

This project experiments innovative smart city solutions to improve urban public services. The project aims for the public, building management, and local council to cooperate, by setting up an integrated information platform with multi-source data that works with devices/things that resolve a particular city problem as a service.

The project is called Smart Parking with Automated Double Park Detection System (ParkKing) system with the objective to solve the problem of double parking (Figure 1). Apart from this, ParkKing also helps the drivers to locate the nearest available empty parking lot surround them. This will indirectly avoid the problem of double parking where drivers can find the empty parking nearby and park their vehicles properly.

In existing solution, the car detector is located at the center of the parking lot. However, ParkKing has its car detector sensor located 30cm inside from the boundary of the parking lot as shown in Figure 2. This is so that it can detect whether there is an available parking in the lot or there is a car double-parked outside. Next, there is a transceiver gateway installed at the lamp post which can connect up to 20 car detectors of parking lots. When it detect a presence of a car either it is in the parking lot or double-parked car, it will send the data to the control server of the system. For the drivers, there will be a smartphone application which will locate the nearest empty parking lot. When the ParkKing system detects a double-parked car, it will send to the FAVORIOT platform and notify the authority to tow the vehicle away.

Figure 2.0 Placement of the Car Detector Sensor

We believe that the integration of ParkKing system with the existing smart traffic light system and intelligent parking system will bring us a smart management transport system for a smart city.

With the presence of our ParkKing system, we can have an automated double parking detector to ease the management or the local authority of Cyberjaya. Next, we also show the road users in Cyberjaya to the nearest available parking lot available. Thus, they will not simply double-park their car. Besides, after notifying the authority, they can tow the double parked car to warn the drivers and other road users not to double park next time. This is very significant because when there are cars double-parked, it causes traffic congestion. When traffic jam, actually government is spending more money to subsidize the petrol since traffic jam causes a higher petrol consumption.

Future Plans

Apart from what have been mentioned above, we do consider the future development of this project. In future, we can install a camera at the lamp post so that to identify the double-park car’s number plate and match with the data in Jabatan Pengangkutan Jalan Malaysia (JPJ) database using OpenCV for object recognition system. Then, it will send a penalty to the car owner. Besides, we also think of to obtain the car parking data like the period of parking. Typically, customers would want to park at the nearest space to shop. So, to help to reduce the problem of insufficient parking space, we plan to have a car park for those who wish to park extended period and limit the time of parking on the street. This can be done by obtaining the time of parking using our ParkKing system. With this, users will have a better customer experience where they get to find parking easily and bring business opportunity to the shops nearby. In our future plan, we also want to integrate our ParkKing system with an automated parking fee payment system to replace the current parking coupon system. This ParkKing system will also be a liability for the management, but we can generate income by co-operating with the shop or company nearby not only to cover the maintenance fees but become a passive income as well! For future development, this ParkKing system can contribute to traffic flow prediction by using the big data concept. By having traffic flow forecasting, we can definitely have a well thought-out town planning.

About ATT

Advanced Telecommunication Technology (ATT) research group is composed of researchers in the field of network communication. In line with the research theme of Internet of Everything (IoE) solutions, the research activities are divided into two main research teams which are the pervasive networks and networks computing & security. Contact: att@fke.utm.my

About FAVORIOT

FAVORIOT offers an IOT platform specifically designed for any Internet of Things (IoT) projects. The platform is developed to support the integration of data from sensors and actuators on the internet. Collecting and storing data from IOT devices become much easier. Moreover, the platform also helps developers in building vertical applications without worry about the hosting. Contact: info@favoriot.com | Website: http://www.favoriot.com

The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) said the Industry 4.0 was critical to boost the industrial and economic growth and for Malaysia’s economy to reach RM2 trillion target within the next eight years as announced recently by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

Will this be another hype? Will it face similar skepticism as Smart Cities development in Malaysia? Will it go beyond than just Strategies, Blueprints and Frameworks?

How do you jumpstart IoT?  One thing that you can do is by getting a company as big as Siemens AG to announce that it will be providing some €100 million (RM468.85 million) worth of software grants to local universities and colleges to boost re-skilling and increase training capabilities in preparation for the next industrial age in Malaysia.

“We offered to the (Malaysian) Prime Minister yesterday that Siemens can provide first-class help in establishing software tools for the industrial Internet to be applied to areas of manufacturing like Industrie 4.0, and will willingly grant the sum of €100 million worth of software to universities and colleges so that the young generation can learn to simulate in the virtual world of manufacturing,” its president and chief executive officer (CEO) Joe Kaeser said in a statement on April 14, 2017 recently.

This is a welcoming news to the whole IoT industry. Nothing moves without proper investment. The industry needs a boost, need to get its feet off the ground, need to act fast – and that amount of €100 million is a real “energy pill.”

There is 3 key success factors Industry 4.0 can realize IoT in Malaysia faster than Smart Cities:

1. Survivability – If SMEs in Malaysia want to compete and remain relevant, there is no other way but to introduce cyber-physical technology such IoT, Big Data Analytics, and automation. With the rising costs of resources and challenging economic situation, the only way to ensure sustainability is to reduce operational costs and increase productivity.
2. Stakeholders – Unlike smart cities deployment that needs to go through multiple stakeholders, the introduction of Industry 4.0 to their manufacturing facilities are made by the smaller individual companies. The criticality and urgency of their situation far surpass the life of a city.
3. Scale – SMEs are far smaller than a city. Thus, any implementation is less risky and have better control. Build small but think big.

When Siemens AG plan to introduce Industry 4.0 to the Universities and Colleges, it shows that education is essential and must start at the very early stage to produce a new generation of engineers and software developers.

About the Author

Dr. Mazlan Abbas is currently the Co-Founder and CEO of FAVORIOT Sdn Bhd. He is an IOT Evangelist and a Thought Leader. He received an award as 50 Most Impactful Smart Cities Leaders by World CSR 2017. He is ranked No. 20th Thought Leader in IOT by 2014 Onalytics Report – “The Internet of Things – Top 100 Thought Leaders”, ranked Top 10 in IoT Top 100 Influencers by Postscapes 2016/2017, ranked Top 100 in Smart Cities Top Experts by Agilience Authority Index May 2016. You can reach him on LinkedIn or Twitter. Check all his presentation slides HERE.