The project idea
Handy P@rking project arises in the field of Smart Cities, which aim to provide a smart and innovative public services for the city context, to improve the quality of life and meet the needs of citizens and companies, as well as for institutions.
One of the main problems is to allow the best use of the parking areas for private cars. It’s evident that, especially in some urban areas, it’s often really difficult to find a parking area, increasing the car traffic, gasoline consumption and urban air pollution.
Handy P@rking aims to make more pleasant and intelligent moving by car, search and use of parking areas: the system provides monitoring of open access parking areas, such as on the roadside, and monitoring of car parking areas in closed structures where access is allowed only through a controlled gate. The idea is to create a system that delivers information to car drivers about the availability of parking areas near some place of interest in the city, by a smartphone App. Just select the area on an interactive map to get information effectively on potentially available parking and, in case of closed car parks, you can book for your parking spot in order to ensure to have a reserved place on the car arrival.
With Handy P@rking, when you do a reservation, it’s even more convenient and faster the enter/exit in the parking; thanks to the plate reading system and the automatic payment: in fact, when the car is recognized, it’s possible to calculate the actual time of occupation of the parking space, and scale automatically from your credit card the exact amount due for stay.
The “Top Down” Cluster
Handy Parking is a “Top Down” Cluster Project funded by Sardegna Ricerche and Regione Autonoma della Sardegna by ERDF OP 2007-2013. The Cluster Project put together research institutions and innovative companies that will benefit from the mutual cooperation. The Cluster objective is therefore to promote initiatives and proposals made by research organizations, focused on companies in specific sector to develop projects on common issues to the clusters themselves. Specifically Handy P @ rking has as its proponent CRS4 (Centre for Research, Development and Higher Studies in Sardinia) and is made up of ten local companies mainly operating in the ICT sector. To get the best and animate in the spirit of the Cluster, the companies are constantly updated on the project development Handy P @ rking, promoting opportunities to meet for a brainstorming, new ideas and proposals that will improve the project quality.