An algorithm to minimize the expectation time of finding a parking place in urban area

Abstract

Urban Parking is a problem that costs time and energy. That is why intelligent parking is a field of research that is growing very quickly. In a city where no sensor infrastructure within each place is deployed but only a counting system at every intersection is available, we show that it still possible to propose an efficient method that determines an itinerary that minimizes the expected time to find an available parking place. For this, we first model the urban area by a graph. Then, we implement an algorithm constructing step by step the itinerary. At each step, we choose the next segment by an evaluation of the future expectation time within this segment. We evaluate the performance of the algorithm by realistic simulations. The simulation data are extracted from the map of Versailles.