A Hybrid Heuristic for Solving a Parking Slot Assignment Problem for Groups of Drivers

Smart cities are attracting attention today as life in urban areas is becoming a growing challenge. Among many other problems, finding a free parking space is probably one of the major inconveniences for the citizens of a big city, especially in the city center and other crowded areas. The search for a parking place is a task which can consume a lot of time and affect the efficiency of economic activities, social interactions, and the health of citizens. The planners of transport and city traffic must pay close attention to this issue in order to achieve an efficient management of mobility in smart cities. The work presented here is intended to serve as an aid in the search for parking, seeking the general interest of a group of drivers. We present a comprehensive description of the problem and apply it to four particular cases with increasing levels of difficulty. Also, we propose a hybrid genetic algorithm for solving these cases and we compare it with other four algorithms in order to evaluate its performance. Experimental results driven on a simulation tests based to a real case study, show that the hybrid genetic algorithm generates promising solutions compared to state of the art algorithms.