Distributed parking management architecture based on multi-agent systems

Abstract

With the increase of the number of vehicles on the road, several traffic congestion problems arise in the big city, and this has a negative impact on the economy, environment and citizens. The time spent looking for a parking space and the traffic generated contributes to mobility and traffic management problems. Hence the need for smart parking management to help drivers to find vacant spaces in a car park in a shorter time. Today, researchers are considering scenarios in which a large amount of services can be offered and used by drivers and authorities to improve the management of the city's car parks and standards of quality of life. Based on literature on smart parking management system (SPMS), we have established the most important services needed such as reservation, orientation, synchronization, and security. The dynamic distributed and open aspect of the problem led us to adopt a multi-agent modeling to ensure continuous evolution and flexibility of the management system. In this conceptual paper, we propose to structure those services on a multi-agent system (MAS) that covers the whole functions of a distributed SPMS. Each service is provided as an autonomous agent, able to communicate and collaborate with the others to propose optimized parking space to customers.