A Fair Assignment of Drivers to Parking Lots

Searching for a parking spot can waste time and gasoline. This waste can be reduced by assigning drivers to parking lots based on their destination and arrival time. In such a system, drivers could request a parking spot in advance and be alerted (e.g., via their phone or vehicle) of their assignment to a specific parking lot or available spot. In this paper, a parking assignment system is described to allocate parking spaces in a fair and equitable manner. Heuristics are developed to solve the underlying large scale optimization problem. The efficacy of the system is demonstrated by applying our algorithms to real data sets.