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Malaysia is known for its fast-paced, thriving urban life. One of the fastest developing urban spaces in the world, the capital of Kuala Lumpur is teeming with life at every hour of the day. Which makes it ironic that such a driven city slows to crawl when it comes to the traffic situation. The streets are always packed, the shortest distances take hours to traverse, and you’re more likely to win the lottery than find a timely parking spot.

A study by Uber Malaysia showed that every car owner in Kuala Lumpur spends close to 152 hours a year just looking for parking! This needs to change, and IoT solution for parking problem in Malaysia may be the way to go about it.

IoT, or the Internet of Things, is a system of connected computing devices, machines, objects and people that has the ability to collect and act on data without needing active human interaction.

In a smart parking system, sensing devices can determine whether a parking spot is taken by using data from a variety of different data inputs from a camera, counting equipment at gates of a lot, or sensors in the pavement. This system is capable of monitoring parking, creating parking reservations, giving directions and even allowing you more versatility for how you pay for parking.

Here are a few ways IoT smart parking solutions can solve the parking problem in Malaysia.

Real-Time Data Analysis:

IoT solutions allow you to monitor events in real-time, which for smart parking, means you can look up available parking spots on an app on your phone in real-time. Collaborating this with real-time traffic analyses, which is something companies like Get My Parking do, can offer great IoT solution to parking problem in Malaysia by cutting down on congestion problems during rush hour. Stolen vehicles can be tracked across parking spots by automated license plate recognition, and it becomes infinitely harder to accidentally misplace your car.

Guaranteed Parking Spots:

In Malaysia, the parking spot lottery is possibly that biggest parking problem. Smart parking solutions almost completely eliminate this fear, by removing the uncertainty surrounding finding a parking spot. Since public transport is not as commonly used, being assured that you will find a parking spot can go a long way in conserving time, effort and money.

You can find a parking spot even before you’ve even entered the area. Payments also become easier, and you never have to worry about having enough change or accidentally ending up in the wrong parking zone. 

Meter time extensions:

A solution that would greatly decrease parking violations, is if you received a notification for your paid parking spot time expiring. No one enjoys getting a ticket, and getting this notification would let you pay the nominal fee for a 15-minute extension online, avoiding a lot of hassle and manpower for the government as well. Since not too many parking spot violations are actually enforced, this would also greatly increase the revenue generated by metered parking spots.

Identifying Different Priority Violations:

Especially in countries as busy as Malaysia, treating all parking infractions as the same can create a great drain on time and manpower, and also increase the number of infractions that do not receive consequences. IoT solutions can help segregate and prioritize infractions that pose a greater threat to public safety in a timely manner. Targeted law enforcement can help in the aversion of accidents instead of prosecution after the fact. Parking in illegal areas pose a significantly larger threat than an expired parking meter, and these can be dealt with immediately.

Efficient Space Utilization:

Smart parking solutions create a far more efficient system for utilizing parking space, both through real-time tracking and a notification system for car owners searching for parking in the area. The parking spaces available can be maximized, creating a cost-effective solution for car owners and a profit generation for those that own the space.

Parking solutions in Malaysia are the need of the hour, and with IoT smart parking, congestion and parking spot lottery would become a thing of the past. The future is now, and embracing it could usher in an era of efficiency and structure like never before.