Prospect of establishing smart car park system for commercial buildings in Sri Lanka

Abstract

‘Car parking’ can be considered as a pivotal challenge and one of the major contributors to traffic congestion in urban areas. This challenge is a result of a dramatic increase in numbers of automobiles on the roads as well as surge in population. Recently, smart car parking management has become an ideal solution for the parking with the emergence of IoT technology. At present, the deployment of smart technologies has rapidly increased specially in the developed countries, in the world. Hence, this study aims to explore the challenges and problems for implementation of smart car system and to make recommendations for implement it tob the Sri Lankan context.. This research carried out in developed countries do not ideally and best suit for developing countries as the economic, social and cultural contexts of the developed countries are different from that of the developing countries. Therefore, this study goes beyond that and addresses about smart car parking system that assisted users to solve the issue of finding a parking space and to minimize the time spent in searching of the nearest available car park, based on the case studies encompassing commercial buildings within the Sri Lankan context. In this research, a comprehensive literature review was conducted with the view to review the concept of smart car parking system and semi structured interviews covering the case studies and expert interviews were carried out. Data gathered, was examined using cross case analysis utilizing qualitative analysis tool namely Nvivo 12 and content analysis. Results of the research can be applied to the Sri Lankan context stepwise in different stages .Therefore, this research has focused to identify the stages of developing smart car parking system along with the identification of benefits, barriers and suitable recommendations as well. Thus, the intended research outcome of this research which is to explore the establishment of smart car park system for commercial buildings in Sri Lanka to mitigate the traffic congestion and to effectively utilize the limited space is successfully accomplished.