Drivers can waste a lot of time looking for somewhere to park, making it hard to plan their journey and contributing to congestion. At the same time,municipalities can find it hard to collect payments: a parking attendant may have to scan number plates one-by-one to check each vehicle’s payment status. This method consumes a lot of time and manpower. For both drivers and municipalities, the root cause of their parking problems is a lack of real-time data, drivers don’t know where the empty spaces are and the authorities don’t know the payment status of vehicles parked in ticketed bays.
To give drivers and authorities real-time information, mobile operator TM ONE has developed a smart parking solution, which can show drivers where spaces are via a smartphone app and a dashboard accessible through any device connected to the Internet. It also provides parking authorities with a single platform through which they can monitor all the spaces under their purview.
The solution combines cameras and sensors, connectivity, artificial intelligence (AI), data visualisation and analytics on a single platform. The data captured by sensors and cameras are processed by an AI system at the edge of the network, which
then transmits the metadata via TM ONE’s 4G network to the cloud to be analysed and displayed on the smart parking dashboard. As a result, drivers and municipalities can see all the information they need, including real-time availability and payment
status. Drivers can even use the smartphone app to book a vacant parking space before they arrive.
For parking attendants, the solution can pinpoint vehicles with unpaid or expired parking fees, making enforcement fast and accurate. It can also be used to vary prices according to demand. TM ONE says that will translate into higher revenues and lower operation costs for the local councils or parking operators that run the outdoor parking spaces.
TM ONE has deployed its smart parking solution for Majlis Perbandaran Subang Jaya, the local authority that manages the infrastructure and municipal services in Subang Jaya city in Malaysia. The end-to-end service includes the smart parking solution, a mobile app drivers can use to pay for a space, a round-the-clock service helpdesk and a monitoring and management centre.
TM ONE is now enhancing the smart parking solution further. For example, it is integrating parking space availability alerts with a navigation system to guide drivers to the nearest empty parking spot. The operator also plans to provide parking attendants
with a smartphone app and a compound ticket printer, which can be integrated with other parking systems.
As 5G connectivity becomes available in Malaysia, TM ONE has also piloted the solution over 5G in Subang Jaya as part of the field trial organised by the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC). The 5G-enabled smart parking supports real-time video streaming from AI-based cameras to enable the detection of irregular behaviour, thereby providing safety and surveillance capabilities.
This article was first published on GSMA
