City Council - Parking Enforcement

Councils manage the region's parking spaces and provide various provisions for a better patron experiences while using the various facilities (like schools, bus zones, clear way, no-standing zones) provided by the council. Abuse of these facilities need to be managed and using SenSen's Mobile ANPR solution councils can enforce various solutions.

This section provides the context and user requirements for configuring NetVi to deliver a mobile ANPR solution for councils to cater for various parking infringement applications. Ipswich Council regularly receives complaints about the unsafe parking practices at schools during drop off and pick up times. This is usually responded to by sending parking officers on patrol at the schools in question. However this creates a number of problems including:

• Parents/carers receiving infringement notices often become emotional and abusive;
• The activities of the parking officer can create its own unsafe situations as infringements are written; and
• There are insufficient resources available to Council to undertake compliance patrols at schools without compromising other parking compliance duties.

The safe schools initiative is designed to engage schools as partners in encouraging safe parking practices by parents when dropping off or picking up students. The primary objective of the initiative is to improve community safety by increased compliance with parking regulations at schools.

Initially ICC considered fixed mounting sites for cameras and the images above were taken with a movement activated 5 Megapixel Camera. The trial undertaken at three schools proved the concept and was highly supported by schools. Unfortunately Queensland legislation requires camera based infringements to be made with an ANPR camera. Research to date indicates that a fixed ANPR camera solution is not feasible for the following reasons:

• Infrared ANPR cameras do not have a long range and some of the school parking zones are over one hundred meters long.
• This would necessitate a number of posts and cameras to cover one parking zone in one school.
• The economics of this do not stack up any way it is looked at;
• There are very few portable ANPR cameras available that work with battery packs.
• Failure to achieve a battery solution would necessitate providing power to each pole along with data storage, security etc; and
• Cost of ANPR cameras of appropriate quality is high resulting in a very high project cost for even a small number of cameras.

This lead ICC to consider mobile solutions - that is, ANPR that could be mounted onto a vehicle and driven past school zones at the appropriate times and that could be used for other applications during the day. The Council would be seeking to use the mobile ANPR solution from 7.30am to 4.00pm Monday to Friday.

ICC requires the detection of the following offences along with associated, legally enforceable, evidence collection by the SenSen MANPR solution:

• Parking in no standing zones
• Parking across driveways
• Double parking
• Parking in bus zones

The on board computers and cameras must satisfy the following requirements. ICC is seeking decent quality hardware that can withstand the rigours of the type of deployment they intend for it. It is recommended to get GPS coordinates with each image. This would support the strength of the infringement and be useful for the authorised parking officer.

Computer Requirements:

• Rugged touch screen capable tablet or other computer, vehicle mounted to the centre with SD Card and USB capability.
• All connectors, cables and fittings needed to connect with camera.
• Ruggedized carry case for all equipment
• Microsoft operating system & environment

Camera requirements

• Weather proof with externally mountable magnetic clamps
• Capable of producing HD colour image
• Date, Time and GPS Location stamp - preferably locked and not able to be adjusted once the image is taken and initially processed by the computer
• Adjustment of field of view to accommodate different parking locations

The Mobile ANPR Requirements have been based on the following design elements:

-1. Requirements for 'chain of evidence';
-2. Logical flow and transition between one discrete task and another; and
-3. Requirements of Local Laws or other legislation governing parking compliance.

The Mobile ANPR Requirements will identify process exceptions and escalation points and will be supported by process flow diagrams where appropriate. The Mobile ANPR Requirements captures the vision for how mobile ANPR technology can be deployed within the Local Government regulatory environment.