Smart Park Kerry- Co. Kerry

Selected as an exemplar case study by DCU in partnership with .IE

Kerry is a large county in the southwest of Ireland. It is a mountainous county with many peninsulas, inlets and islands. Kerry’s outstanding natural beauty attracts over 1.5 million tourists annually. Kerry beaches are significant tourist attractions; the county boasts 13 Blue Flag and five Green Coast Award beaches. Beaches present particular challenges for people with disabilities including wayfinding and movement. As such, dedicated off-beach parking bays are important for accessibility and safe enjoyment of beaches by people with disabilities. Unfortunately, shortages of off-beach parking have resulted in illegal parking, parking obstructions, and misuse of parking areas for people with disabilities.

Objectives:

• to deliver disabled Bay parking sensors (using IoT- Internet of Things) to provide data to the Local Authority and public with live information on disabled parking space status (free / busy).
• Develop a disabled parking application that the public can interact with to access the above information.

What:

Smart Park Kerry will provide the Local Authority and the public live information on the availability of disabled parking spaces through a disabled parking app. The project partner, Cellnex, are developing a national Low-power wide-area network (LoRaWAN) IoT Gateway which would permit the scaling out of this project within Kerry and beyond. Parking space data is available on Cellnex’s Smart Brain System, and will be published in the Disabled Parking application.

Why:

This project was introduced to make it easier for people with disabilities to find free parking spaces at Inch Beach. Access to amenities present many problems for people with disabilities. ‘Obstacles’ such as illegal car parking prevents access to popular sites for people with disabilities. This problem is heighted during summertime as there are limited parking spaces to accommodate a large number of seasonal visitors to Kerry’s beaches each year. This app will improve the visibility of and therefore access to disabled parking spaces. It can also facilitate the Local Authority to manage improper use of disabled parking spaces and the demand for this in by providing data on the occupancy of these spaces.

Written by Dr. Jennifer Kennedy, The Irish Institute of Digital Business, Dublin City University.