An Automated Parking Lot Sensing and Management System; The Role of Sociocultural Values in Parking Lot Design and Administration

This STS thesis and technical capstone project together address the widespread issues due to ubiquitous and necessary parking technologies. The STS component of the thesis analyzes the current systems and issues and suggests solutions for designers using mediation theory of technology, while the technical project provides a system which allows the goals in the STS component to be carries out. The technical component consists of a meshed network of inductive sensors and Bluetooth transponders which detects the presence of vehicles, authenticates them, and relays the current information back to management software on a PC. It addresses the inefficiency of parking lots by providing a management system which allows proprietors to enforce badged parking and gain insight into the usage patterns in their parking lot. The STS component investigates several case studies and analyzes current literature using mediation theory to derive conclusions about best practice to provide safety equity for users, to make parking more economically efficient, and to minimize environmental damage due to atmospheric heating and runoff.