Mobile-GIS Based Vehicle Parking Management System, a case study of Garissa Bus Park in the Garissa Urban Authority, Garissa County.

Abstract

Urbanization has been closely related to the economic development of various countries and an attribute of any successful country. This in turn introduces other indices that drive this frontier of development and in particular urban development. Transportation being a key component of urban development has a sector that requires a comprehensive strategy to manage. According to the new constitution 2010, all county capital ought to be like Nairobi by the year 2030, this study looks at studies undertaken to attempt to solve Nairobi parking challenges to predict the formative challenges that will come to face municipality of Garissa. The researcher focused on Garissa. Mobile GIS-Based vehicle parking system solution project has been done based on existing parking management system gaps that exist in the management of both private and public parking places: The general objective of the project was to develop a GIS based solution that manages the parking cycle i.e, pre-arrival information provision, parking allocation, parking spaces status visualization, parking access guidance and subsequent revenue management. The secondary objectives was to eliminate time wasted in looking for parking by conjecture, improve the process of accessing parking space and improve vehicle flow and thus reducing congestion on our roads. Garissa Bus Park is a modem bus park constructed by the Ministry of Local Government's Urban Development Department. The availability of a geo-referenced aerial photo, engineering layout design and the setting out drawings made it a clear choice for advancing the GIS technology enabled parking management system development. System development methodology used was the object oriented and the tools used were declared. Data collection was done on site and it was this data that validated the viability of entities, relationships, data flow, processing and output. The project found out that lack of effective parking management systems is a big contributor to congestion on our urban roads and subsequent low level of service delivery by authorities in managing parking spaces vi In conclusion GIS based parking management ought to be adopted in all public managed and developed parking places since it is the only way to solve spatial and non-spatial parking challenges and requirements. DOMAIN OF INQUIRY AND DEFINITIONS The following are definitions of terms used in this report. Parking: verb - the act of stopping a vehicle and leaving it unoccupied or occupied. Parking: noun - a space designated for parking of vehicles whether paved or not. Public Parking - Parking space available for parking by public. Short-term parking - parking for less than five hours. Reserved Parking - Parking space available to a particular vehicle for a period of not more than three hours after a non-refundable fee of Ksh.40.00. Engaged Parking - an occupied Parking lot by vehicle after paying the full parking amount for the day ksh.140.00. Parking Lot! Parking Bay - a large space constructed to contain subdivisions of specific spaces/ slots to accommodate a single vehicle each at a time. Control points - locations that can be accurately identified on a raster dataset and in real world coordinates Decimal degrees - degrees expressed as a single real number (e.g. 22.456677) rather than as composite of degrees, minutes and seconds and direction (e.g. 070 55' 24"E). The minus sign indicates the western and southern hemispheres