Reader's Response Second Draft

 In the article “IoT based Smart Parking Systems for Smart Cities”, hIOTron(2020), claims that effective management of parking space will prevent traffic congestion. Smart parking utilizes sensors installed on lots to detect lot availability which can be used in offices and shopping malls. Occupants can book the lot in advance while receiving real time accessibility and when the sensors confirm a vacant lot, the car will be parked automatically. For an IoT solution, it must make it easy to transfer field data to the cloud at low cost and increased ROI which is a challenge because there might be real upfront costs as in-ground sensors can incur additional cost for two parking systems. Smart parking authentication is done using an RFID tag and data collected is reserved in the cloud. The app would find a vacant lot and send the location to the user after registration is completed. Optimal parking is achieved with minimal time and effort while enhancing the user’s experience. Smart parking system helps to reduce carbon emission as well as reducing traffic congestion. While I agree that there are many advantages to a smart parking system, it can be costly in terms of the initial cost.

There are many advantages to smart parking systems. One of which includes reducing the carbon emission. In this urbanized city, there is an increase in the number of cars on the road which seriously affects the quality of the traffic as occupants’ have to search for available parking lot which increases the traffic volume. Muhammad Alam (2018) states that in Los Angeles, the search for available parking took 178,000 litres of fuel (which is enough to circle the world 38 times) and produced 730 tons of carbon dioxide.  This shows the heavy impact it has to the drivers’ and mother earth. With the implementation of smart parking, users can pre book the parking slot which reduces the need to look for a parking slot while reducing traffic as fewer cars are needed to drive around in search of an open parking space. 

 

Secondly, a research has shown that smart parking systems has benefits to stakeholders. Smart parking applications are particularly helpful in cities with high population and traffic densities. According to Shubhankar Gautam (2018), one city that has benefitted greatly from smart parking technology is San Francisco. After the technology has been implemented in the city, the time taken to find a parking space reduced by 43%, miles were driven to get to a parking space dropped by 30% and greenhouse gas emissions dropped by 30%. This shows that smart parking system reduces the stress for users to find a parking lot as the time needed for them to find a parking lot with smart parking is reduced, the use of fuels have also decreased as users do not need to drive around to search for a parking lot with the convenience of an App. 

 

Lastly, automated parking is also used in the smart parking systems whereby occupants’ do not need to park their own cars after finding a desired lot. Computer controlled mechanism are used in automated parking, where the safety features are available. After the user has paid for the parking, by using RFID technologies, the payment is made by Automated Vehicle Identification (AVI) tag. This RFID technology and mobile devices are contact less methods, where the contact methods are smart cards, debit cards and credit card. The car will be shifted by an elevator or a carousel system up to the storage floors and parked into a proper space with security guarantee.

In conclusion, there are many advantages to smart parking systems from minimizing the time needed to find a parking lot to reducing traffic and green house gas emissions. The only challenge of smart parking is the cost which however is not an issue in Singapore as Singapore is an urbanized city with adequate funds. 

 

Reference

hIOTron. (2020). IoT based Smart Parking Systems for Smart Cities.

 

Retrieved from https://www.hiotron.com/smart-parking/

Muhammad Alam. (2018). “Real-Time Smart Parking Systems Integration in Distributed ITS for Smart Cities”

Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/1485652 

Shubhankar Gautam. (2018). Benefits of Smart Parking Series: How Smart Parking Reduces Traffic

Retrieved from https://blog.getmyparking.com/2018/10/11/benefits-of-smart-parking-series-how-smart-parking-reduces-traffic/

G. Revathi and V. R. S. Dhulipala. (2012). "Smart parking systems and sensors: A survey," 

Retrieved from https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6179195

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