Multi-Agent Parking Place Simulation

• Published in: Advances in Practical Applications of Cyber-Physical Multi-Agent Systems: The PAAMS Collection Vol. 10349; pp. 272 - 283
• Main Authors: Vrancken, Thomas, Tenbrock, Daniel, Reick, Sebastian, Bozhinovski, Dejan, Weiss, Gerhard, Spanakis, Gerasimos
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Springer International Publishing AG 2017; Springer International Publishing
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Dynamic Price; Parking Agent; Social Welfare; Static Price; Traffic Flow
• ISBN: 3319599291; 9783319599298
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-59930-4_22

Parking in large urban areas is becoming an issue of great concern with many implications (environmental, financial, societal, etc.). In our research we investigate automated dynamic pricing (ADP) as a mechanism for regulating parking place allocation. ADP means that the price for staying in a parking facility for a certain amount of time will fluctuate depending on the day and time of the week. In this paper, such a scenario is explored using multi-agent based simulation. Two kinds of agents are considered: drivers and parking facilities. Experiments are conducted in a real city environment in order to observe the impact of dynamic pricing, competition and demand increase. Results show that dynamic pricing application leads to better results (in terms of profit margin) for the parking facilities while it decreases drivers’ utility.