IoT-Based Smart Parking for Smart Cities

The advance in computing brought also solutions to problems that can improve citizen's life. One significant problem involves parking vehicles, which is related to traffic congestion, air pollution and driver stress. Due to that fact and the increase in the number of vehicles, it becomes necessary a smart parking proposal that mitigates those problems and interacts with the drivers. In this paper we will describe a smart parking system able to gather quantitative information and provide it trough an extensible platform to drivers and other smart city applications. The proposed system is implemented disposing ultrasonic sensors, a web service, the FIWARE platform, and a mobile application to Android devices, on a three-layer architecture. The paper also aims to present the results of a proof of concept, which shows that this approach is appropriate for monitoring parking systems and exhibit the parking lot situation at any given moment. Thus, it is the first step to propose a comprehensive solution for smart cities.