Qatar Mobility and Innovations Centre (QMIC) has started connecting the parking facilities across the country to understand parking trends.
“We have already connected a number of parking facilities through our Masarak platform,” Dr Hamid Menouar, product manager, R&D expert at QMIC, told Gulf Times on the sidelines of the Smart Parking Qatar Conference which opened yesterday.
The parking facilities connected by QMIC are Doha Exhibition and Convention Centre Parking, Souq Waqif North Underground Parking, Al Ahmed Parking, Al Shioukh parking and Katara Cultural Village Underground Parking.
According to the official, most parking facilities are busy all through the day.
“However, there are some facilities which are under-utilised. This is because many people are not aware of such facilities. Most of the parking lots in West Bay are fully utilised and fully occupied all through the day,” Dr Menouar said.
“One solution to solve this issue is to have connected parking and provide real time information on parking. This will help public authorities, third parties and other stakeholders to optimise the parking facility and solve the issues in a better manner,” he said.
“QMIC has started collecting the data which can be used by the authorities to understand the trend of how the parking is used. We are planning to try to connect more parking lots. The Katara parking lot was added a few weeks back.”
But he pointed out that the amount of data available at present is limited.
“We will get more information as we connect more parking lots. The data for the parking is still to be analysed precisely.
“We are planning to analyse the parking data and combine it with the the traffic data and come out with detailed reports soon,” he added.