MACMobility Data Analytics Center
← Transportation Economics

Project

CPS: Collaborative Research: Matching Parking Supply to Travel Demand towards Sustainability

A cyber-physical-social system for sensing-driven parking that uses smart sensors, social media, and big-data analytics to match parking supply with travel demand.

  • LeadSean Qian
  • FunderNational Science Foundation (Cyber-Physical Systems program)
  • Years2015–2018
On-street parking

Parking significantly impacts urban travel costs and influences transportation choices. The advent of smart sensors, wireless communication, social media, and big-data analytics offers a unique opportunity to tap parking's influence on travel — to enhance efficiency and sustainability.

The initiative combines smart sensors, data repositories, management systems, and traffic control to reduce congestion and emissions. Research examined individualized and infrastructure traffic data while developing a reservoir-based network flow model for understanding parking-traffic interactions across large networks.

The project implements dynamic control mechanisms — adjusting prices, access, and information for public parking — to influence commuter behavior through daily experience, real-time recommendations, and competitive market effects on private parking areas.