Over 1000 Nedap E-Parking Licenses for disabled parking in Italy

Smart disabled parking in Italy

Lerici and Livorno are two Italian seaside cities in the Liguria region. Due to the favorable climate conditions all year long, many elderly people decide to move seaside for a better life quality. Also for this reason, over 1000 mobility impaired people are living in Lerici & Livorno and surrounding municipalities.

In general, parking spaces for mobility impaired are reduced to about 6% of the total amount of parking spaces. In Italy only 2% of the parking spaces are allocated to disabled. The limited spaces which are available for them are often occupied by vehicles without a disabled permit, depriving mobility impaired people of a “vital" resource. Available parking in the city for mobility impaired is, in many cases, important for the full social integration of disabled. For this reason, cities in Italy are working on initiatives to improve mobility for elderly and mobility impaired drivers.

SENSIT E-Parking License

To improve the parking situation, Nedap’s SENSIT smart parking sensors and electronic parking license where integrated by Project Automation. Nedap’s SENSIT System consists of in-ground parking sensors, that detect the occupancy status of each (disabled) parking bay in real-time. Through the wireless sensor network, the occupancy and parking duration in the cities are transmitted to Project Automation’s WESPark solution, the central software application.

Nedap’s E-Parking License (Electronic Parking License) is issued to all mobility impaired in the Livorno and Lerici region and acts as a digital disabled parking permit. The device, which can be placed on the inside windshield of the vehicle, is fully integrated with the SENSIT system to detect if the person is authorized to park in the designated bay. The parking license automatically transmits its presence to the central software application, right when the vehicle parks.

The parking license solution is also available as smartphone app (Nedap Parking License App), but as the solution was applied in an area with mainly elderly people, the cities expressed their preference in the hardware E-Parking License device.

Improved mobility, enhanced monitoring

By implementing this smart parking solution in the Italian regions, the Municipal Police is now able to manage the parking bays reserved for the disabled drivers in real-time, thus act quickly on any illegitimate use of the parking bays. Through the WESPark Software, the cities are able to efficiently supervise the entire process of disabled parking, including cost effect issuing of permits, analyzing mobility data and alerting parking officers.

The project in the news

With the implemented solution, the city’s available disabled parking bays become visible and easily findable for mobility impaired drivers, reducing the search traffic in the city center and improving the mobility for the inhabitants.

First large scale worldwide deployment

The E-Parking License and Nedap SENSIT sensors will be rolled out by Project Automation through the Livorno region to remote monitor parking bays reserved for disabled parking.  Gradually, the sensors will be placed in all the parking bays of the territory.

“This is the first large scale application using Electronic Parking Licenses to monitor legitimate use of disabled parking bays world-wide and therefor is breakthrough in technology. It benefits the users by providing available spaces for those designated user groups the bays are allocated to.” Davide Bogni, Business Unit Manager for Project Automation