A Webgis Based Vehicle Parking Management System: Case Study of Upper Hill, Nairobi

Abstract

In an effort to address challenges that face urban transportation, technological innovations that put cities towards sustainable smart cities are imperative. Nairobi County faces enormous challenges in offering efficient parking services to its residents. Some of these challenges include lack of information on available parking lots and also the most convenient routes to navigate to those lots. To solve these problems, technology reviews of implemented systems across the globe needed be carried out. Potential application of GIS in car parking solutions was studied in detail. Present systems were found from documented literature to be majorly focused on Internet of Things (IoT) with few systems having included capabilities of GIS in their implementation. The gaps inherent in the present systems were identified and incorporated in the design of a vehicle management system that not only looks at the bird’s eye view of the parking lots, but also focuses on the spatial location of the individual parking lots to incorporate user preferences. This study concludes that, utilizing GIS analytical and visualization capabilities will help drivers locate individual preferred parking lots easily and navigate to those lots. The study recommends implementation of a webGIS based vehicle parking management system that would be a market place for willing parking lots’ owners to have their parking lots put online for any user to access them and thereby generate revenue.