1. From the identified general problems from your chosen location in phase 1, include additional support that shows/proves that these are indeed significant problems for the area. You will need to include detail such as: data, community feedback, cost, etc.
• There is no actual problem with the parking situation in Baltimore, however our app will help make it more convenient to park when in the city. I will help residents, commuters, and tourists find the best place to park and help navigate them to an open spot once in the garage. It will make finding a parking spot easier and faster for everyone in the city.
2. Discuss why and how your company / organization propose to solve or improve these issues?
• IPark is here to help make parking simpler in the city. We plan on putting sensors into every parking spot in all the garages in Baltimore. Through this we will have an app and web page that users will be able to find the closest spot, pay for parking, and find the cheapest spot too. There are 27 major parking garages in Baltimore with over 600 spots per garage. Our app will let our users decide which one of these garages is the best to park at for them. It will also allow them to see how many spots are left, and reserve a spot if availability is slim.
3. What technologies will be needed as part of these solutions? What are the requirements of using these technologies? (Be as specific as possible)
• We will be adding sensors in every spot of the parking garage to allow users to see how many spots are open and help navigate them to an open spot once inside the garage. We also will have servers that will interconnect each garage. With the sensors and servers we will also have a app to display the information to the users.
4. How does it compare to your competitors? If there are no competitors or other similar initiatives, then be sure to state this in the report.
• We have competitors who already have apps that tell you price and location of garages, but we will be the only ones to install the sensors. The sensors will allow our customers to check availability of parking and help guide our customers once in the garage.
5. Will your solutions require usage of existing infrastructures, or implementations of new infrastructures? Explain.
• In order to keep the price of the project down we're going to use the pre existing parking lots in the city of Baltimore as long as they pass city inspection laws and are safe to use. Once we obtain the specific permits needed we will place the parking sensor that will notify our app if the spot is available or not in each individual parking spot.
6. What are the projected estimated costs? Will you need specific resources/ software or hardware?
• Creating the app- To create the app it will cost anywhere between $140,000 - $210,000.
o To breakdown the costs, the $140,000 - $210,000 includes;
? $120,000 of operational dollars for legal, accounting, and comparable fees.
? $35,000 per month for a team of four, for building the app.
? The timeline to build the app is usually anywhere between 4-6 months.
• Cost of the Sensors - Each individual sensor will cost between $200 and $400 to install
• Man Labor - Each individual who will be installing the sensors in the parking spots will be paid 15$ per hour.
7. Are there any particular partnerships within the community that would be needed or helpful in order to achieve this goal?
• We will need to contact the owners of the parking lots in the city of Baltimore, whether it be a Small business, privately-owned corporation, partnership, or sole proprietorship. When we finally reach all of the owners we will need to come to a deal with them in order to install the sensors and actually use the lots as a part of our app.
8. Are there certain regulations or laws that need to be considered if your plan goes into effect?
• If our plan goes into effect, we will need to obtain specific building permits as well as parking permits before we can install the sensors in each spot. The only regulations to be considered are the parking lots specific rules that are in place. As far as laws go, the only laws to be considered are the standing driving laws.
9. Who would be impacted most by your project?
• The people most impacted by our project is the city of Baltimore, but this app could potentially spread throughout the whole east coast. The citizens of Baltimore will benefit the most from our app because we designed the app to help them find parking spots throughout the city. Many people throughout the community never heard of an app to help find parking. Even as the project helps Baltimore citizen the project has potential to impact the whole country. Tourist are also people impacted by our app because people from out of town don't know where to park and so the app makes it easier. So in general the project is here to help the citizens of Baltimore who need to find parking.
10. Do you feel that there would be any side effects of your project? Explain.
• There are no current side effects when using our product that is known. Our product is an app so other than staring at the screen when you use the phone there is no side effect. The parking app is not a medicine or drug so it doesn't create a secondary undesirable effect for our customers which is the definition of side effects.
11. How will your company get the supplies and resources it needs to implement your proposed project?
• Our team of software developers will be the one's creating the app for our company. We look forward to getting supplies and resources we need from two companies. We have partnerships with Lumapro and Dell because they will like to help us revolutionize the way everyone park. Our company looks forward to ordering our motion sensors from the company Lumapro. There are about 16200 parking spots in the city of Baltimore and every parking spot has its own individual motion sensor. Lumapro is giving us a 20% discount for using their product. We will need a lot of servers to store our data to keep our app and our sensor networks efficient. Dell is going to also cut a deal with us. We will use Dell's powerful PowerEdge T110 II compact tower server(dell.com). We will save 31% on the PowerEdge tower using Dell as our server provider(dell.com).
"LumaPro® Products - Switch How You Think about Lighting." LumaPro Lighting. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Oct. 2015.
https://www.dell.com/us/business/p/poweredge-t110-2/fs