Monday Musing: Global parking data standard invites feedback on latest release

These are exciting times – around the globe, new services and technologies are combining to create greater convenience for consumers, customers, and business owners to better utilise our available parking, mobility, and transport infrastructure.  Whether it’s ride-sharing, micro-mobility, dynamic pricing, remote management, or improved reporting, the sharing of data is key to enabling the adoption of these services.

The Alliance for Parking Data Standards (APDS) sits at the heart of this as it leads on developing a consensus-built, international data specification. This specification establishes a common language for data and definitions in the parking, transportation, and mobility sector. This common language will facilitate integration, compatibility, and communication between all parking related groups, whether parking operators, landowners, local governments, the automotive industry, IT and App developers.

It will also revolutionise the way drivers find, book, and pay for parking and make it easier for local authorities and private companies to exchange data, paving the way for self-driving vehicles to navigate both driver and passengers to an available space based on the price, quality of the space, safety of the space and availability of on-site services - including being near to electric charging points.

APDS has recently announced the release of APDS Specification Release candidate 3.0 for public comment which is available from the APDS website. This updated version covers the data domains of Place, Right, Rate, Quote, Occupancy, Session, and Observation. The release documents include:

• An Information Model
• A Data Dictionary
• Example Use Case

Following feedback on the 2.1 release, a number of updates and enhancements have been made to the 3.0 candidate release, including:

• The introduction of Quote domain which supports the sharing of price and availability
• The ability to more easily document and share Equipment and Services at a location within an Identified Area
• Better unified Organization Roles and Contacts throughout the information model
• User defined lists enabled for specific data elements such as Occupancy Level, Emissions, and Vehicle Types
• Updated data categories to reduce confusion with similar titled data elements
• Financial data to enable more accurate referencing of transaction activity has been moved
• The addition of several use cases to show application of the data specification

Guidance on how to use the specification with common messaging formats is available upon request from the APDS website.

We would like to thank all the professionals from parking, transportation, and mobility worldwide that have contributed to APDS Specification Release candidate 3.0. If you would like to submit your suggestions, corrections, and comments you can do so until June 15.  All feedback will be reviewed, and a final version is planned to be released by the end of June 2021.

The APDS is a direct result of the British Parking Association’s collaboration with government, parking service providers, vehicle manufacturers and others, to enable new innovations that will provide a cleaner, safer, and smarter parking experience for everyone.

Contact info@allianceforparkingdatastandards.com to find out more.