A New Parking Space Allocation System based on a Distributed Constraint Optimization Approach

This paper develops and evaluates a new decentralized mechanism for the allocation of parking slots in downtown, using a distributed constraints optimization approach (DCOP). Our mechanism works with the multiparking/multi-zone model, where vehicles are connected and can exchange information with the distributed allocation system. This mechanism can reach the minimal allocation costs where vehicles are assigned to the parking lots with the best possible aggregated user costs. The cost is calculated based on driver’s aggregated preferences over slots. We empirically evaluated the performance of our approach with randomly generated costs and tested on three different configurations. The evaluation shows the performance of each configuration in terms of runtime and volume of exchanged data.