By Ali Al-Gburi
How Dataroots used Computer Vision to revolutionize Parking Management for a Belgian Company.
Our goal?
To deliver new and extensive insights into the occupancy rates of street and garage parking spaces, empowering our client to manage resources with unprecedented efficiency. Let's dive into how we tackled various challenges and implemented this state-of-the art solution that brings this transformation to life.
Project Goal and Data Collection
Our objective was to develop a data product to enhance our client's understanding of parking availability and track how occupancy rates evolved over time. We created an intuitive and easy to use dashboard so the company could consume everything close to real time and keep track of evolutions today and in the future. This way we were able to support the company in its transition to operate from a data first perspective.
The data collection itself involved a scan car driving around for approximately 8 hours daily, recording geolocation and timestamps of non-moving vehicles. This raw data combined with third party and open data source was plotted on a map, with parking zones color-coded to reflect different characteristics. Balancing the availability of data with the ambition to create a unified model presents a challenging reality. This model aims not only to represent the current state but also to make predictions for the future.
Overcoming Key Challenges
Turning this rich data into actionable insights required overcoming several challenges:
- Combined and unified multiple data sources in order to train a solid baseline.
- Mapping scanned vehicles to parking spaces: we mapped every scan to the nearest parking space for quick identification of occupied spaces.
- Vehicles far from parking spaces: we removed outliers more than 4 meters away from a parking space to account for incorrectly parked vehicles and missing parking space data.
- Multiple vehicles in one parking space: we kept the scan nearest to the parking space and removed others, addressing issues of incorrect parking and multiple scans of the same space.
- Partial street scans: we defined "scan moments" and split streets into segments to more accurately represent occupancy rates when only part of a street was scanned.
- Juncture scans: we flagged parking spaces at street entrances as "juncture parking spaces" to avoid misrepresenting occupancy rates based on partial scans.
- One-side scans: we split wide streets along their long axis and flagged parking spaces as left or right to account for instances where only one side of a street was scanned.
- Gaps in the data: we highlighted segments where the scan car drove without picking up any scans, using an open data network for interpolation.
Building the Solution for operational usage
We refactored all these transformations into a pipeline built on Azure ML Studio. This pipeline is triggered when new scan car data is uploaded, ensuring our dashboard remains current and accurate.
The Outcome
Our innovative dashboard provided a tangible real-time tool with a clear view of parking occupancy, transforming a city's parking resource management. This project not only validated our technical capabilities but also demonstrated our commitment to delivering actionable insights through advanced data visualization and analysis. It serves as a clear example of Dataroots being an end-to-end partner, from addressing challenges to deploying a product used by the organization on a daily basis.
Why Work With Us?
Businesses seeking to leverage data from multiple sources and formats for urban planning or facility management can depend on our expertise. We are a one-stop-shop partner, providing comprehensive services from data collection and model development to training and visualization, to create a tangible impact.
We ensure that you receive precise, actionable insights tailored to your specific needs. Whether you're a city planner, a parking facility manager, or a business aiming to optimize space utilization, our solutions are designed to empower your decision-making with accurate and up-to-date information.
Ready to revolutionize your facility management or tackle another data-driven challenge? Partner with us to turn your vision into reality with cutting-edge technology and pragmatic, usable innovative solutions.
Contact one of our experts via LinkedIn or the Dataroots.io website.