Low-Effort Support to Efficient Urban Parking in a Smart City Perspective

The Internet of Things (IoT) is today considered as one of the most important enabling technologies for developing a wide variety of smart services aimed at assisting the final user in the urban environment. In this chapter, we present how IoT can be employed to develop a system for the effective and efficient management of urban parking, thus providing a small, yet relevant contribution to the implementation of a real Smart City. Our system relies on the identification of each single parking slot but, unlike other approaches proposed in the last years, it does not require dedicated sensors and/or infrastructure, thus it can be regarded as a low-cost and low-effort solution. Indeed, it collects parking data from a mobile application on the drivers’ mobile devices and possibly identifies each slot by QR codes deployed on the single parking spots. The amount of data collected by the system on parking occupancy allows inferring valuable information that can be used by local governments. For instance, it will be possible to define appropriate pricing schemes so as to promote parking areas not particularly occupied. The employment of an SOA design guarantees the integration of the developed system with other existing services within a Smart City.