Car Park Overspill Study PROJECT OVERVIEW
Contents
Project Introduction and Background
Objectives
Motivation and Project Scope
With data sets provided by our project sponsor, our group will help our sponsor conduct some preliminary data analysis in report format. The preliminary report contains detailed site information along with relevant data collected, such as human traffic count within the site and roadside parking data. We help our project sponsor to compile the reports so that our sponsor can further hand them over to Land Transport Authority (LTA) to let LTA have a better understanding about the parking situation around those identified development sites. In this project, our group aims to finish 5 to 6 preliminary reports, and each of them is for one particular site that assigned by the project sponsor.
Meanwhile, having identified the limitations of the collected data provided by our project sponsor, in order to conduct a valid data analysis and gain more insights, our group aims to build a simulation programme based on Agent-based Model to simulate and estimate car park parking occupancy and overspill outcomes against a set of dynamically changed variables, and to provide a valid explanation on the outcomes of our model against the variables in report format. In order to achieve these objectives, our group identified the following major tasks in our project besides the preliminary reports aforementioned:
- Prepare data including cleaning collected raw data and transforming them into usable format.
- Research on Agent-based Modelling (ABM) and learn the programming language required by NetLogo - an ABM simulator.
- Apply project data into NetLogo and build a valid model.
- Analyze and evaluate the outcomes of our built model.
Project Data
Data Collection
In order to facilitate the understanding of current parking situation, two kinds of data is collected in this project and they are related to Parking Occupancy and Overspill and Human Traffic Count respectively. Each kind of the data is collected island wide. In total of 65 different site data is collected, and the sites include 30 retail malls, 15 retail and F&B clusters, 10 hawker centers, and 10 community clubs.
Parking Occupancy and Overspill data counts the total number of car park lots available on site, off-street parking lots provided by the development, and the number of parking lots inside the public car parks. To collect the data, 3 to 4 Enumerators are assigned to the entrance / exit of the car park. A typical example would be, Enumerator A counts the number of empty lots in the park, Enumerator B notes the number of cars IN and OUT until the intended start of the survey. Hence, the following equation si derived: the Base Car Park Occupancy (the number of empty lots in the park at the survey time) = number of empty lots in the park - Total IN + Total OUT.
Human Traffic Counts refers to the counting of the number of people that enter and exit a particular development, in order to derive the total number of people within the development at a particular period. Five methods are used for counting, and they are:
- Manual Count
- Line-of-Sight Count by enumerators
- Automated Count using electronic devices
- Snapshot Count
- Sit-Stand Count by roamers
In considering the possible differences of data collected under Peak and Non-peak days, aforementioned data is collected in week days and weekends separately.
In order to assure the survey sample validity, the margin of error and confidence interval of the sample data is controlled within 5% and 95% respectively.
Data Set
Pre-survey Report
It states the basic information about the survey site, such as site characteristics, site assessment, recommended survey time and locations. The report is to provide readers more insights into the studied area and assess the impact on the surroundings.
Human Traffic Count
It records the total counts of human in and out in 15 minutes interval from 10:00 AM to 01:00 PM and 6:00 PM to 9 PM each survey day.
Roadside Parking Count
It records the car park occupancy and overspill count in 15 minutes interval from 07:00 AM to 10:00 PM of each survey day. The data is further subcategorised into Cars and M/Cs.
Interview Survey
The survey states some demographic information like genders, age groups etc along with other information like the purpose of visit of surveyors, kinds of transportations taken, visit frequency etc.
