IoT Smart Parking Sensors Assist with Improved Services for Disabled Users

Sutton Council in South London, United Kingdom, is trialing the use of internet-enabled sensors to improve the services that are available for disabled car users. The sensors that are being provided by the UK-based Internet of Things (IoT) Solutions Group and will be offering insights on the usage, frequency, and duration of the stays in the given disabled spaces. Sutton Council is deploying this project so that it can enable them to make better informed decisions in the future for parking within the borough.

Smart parking solutions are becoming more frequently adopted to help ease the task of parking in major cities, airports, and shopping centers. Smart parking can be offered in different solution types, from those offering specifically parking space availability to those that manage payment on top of the parking availability. Parking in large facilities, especially at busier periods of the year such as the holidays, can be a task in itself, and though disabled parking does tend to be located close to the entry point for which the parking facility is intended to serve, it does not always mean that they are easily spotted by the desired user. Many large car parks use a lighting system for parking availability – i.e., red means occupied and green means vacant.

The introduction by Sutton Council is including ease of parking for the disabled to their priority list. The sensors deployed will enable actionable insights regarding the rate at which disabled bays are used, which can be very useful in future planning. The sensors will offer data on whether or not there are too many or not enough disabled parking bays. Historically, the council has relied upon CCTV and other forms of evidence, which have been considered unclear and therefore less efficient, when looking at the usage of their bays.

The main goal of this deployment is to allow disabled road users to have the ability to park in the borough’s town center and around the borough. It will also enable the council to make informed decisions in the future of developing the borough to ensure that disabled bay users are still able to park. The sensors are to be used in a yearlong trial so that they are able to really gain a true understanding of the demographic within their area.

The project comes under the InnOvaTe Project, whereby South London Partnership is working with local London councils to be able to deliver innovative IoT projects across the five South London Councils, Sutton included. The ultimate goal for this project is to deliver a multi-purpose IoT platform which will connect and offer insights from various IoT sensors across the boundaries of the boroughs. Smart parking for the disabled is only one of the initiatives of the project, which plans to deploy solutions that tackle specific community opportunities so that the locals are able to live better lives and also deliver economic savings to the boroughs.

Smart parking is becoming a solution that is becoming more popular. It is seeing an increased uptake which is due to continue to grow in the post-pandemic world. Regardless of whether the solutions are being utilized for large parking facilities or around a town, the sensors offer a variety of different insights which can help make a vast of decision for change future planning. For example, where large car parks that use smart parking solutions, the possibilities are abundant. The solutions enable the potential to tie in payment meaning that users are not required to go up to machines that may not have been cleaned for a while, but also, it can encourage private car park businesses to alter their pricing. Where in usual circumstances there is a set rate for a specific amount of time spent in the car park, it could also include the abilities to alter the cost of parking dependent on the time of arrival. The solutions offer insights regarding the busiest times of usage and therefore could lead to an introduction to a different price for peak visiting hours, which is similar to payment models in different markets.