games

Games

Simulation: ParkGame

ParkGame is a model simulating the availability of park space as a result of two interacting variables: the available cars seeking space and the price for parking. The price for parking is the key to the simulation.

Parkgame 2

ParkGame is a GIS-based computer game for studying how drivers cruise for parking in the city. While cruising, drivers need to account simultaneously for several factors – time of arrival, convenience of a parking place, parking prices and walk distance to a destination. Parking search is easy when the occupation rate is low – just drive to the destination and park nearby.

However, in the case of high occupation rate, the trade-off between the factors is negative. The driver can decide to search for free or low fare parking in the streets and this essentially increases the uncertainty of arrival time. The alternative decision is to avoid uncertainty in arrival time, but pay a high fare for parking in a lot. Influencing these decisions is the drivers' perception of the chances to find a free space within an acceptable period of time that, in turn, is defined by the average occupancy rate along the cruising path and turnover of parking in the city streets.

Goal

The goal of a driver-player is to be in time at the meeting at a given destination. To fulfil the task the player has to drive towards the destination, find a parking place and then walk to the destination. The game allows the researcher to vary the levels of occupancy, turnover and parking prices in streets and lots. This flexibility enables testing drivers' reaction to a parking policy that is not introduced yet thus promoting sustainable management of parking demand in the city.

The current example is built on the street and parking outline of the centre of the Tel Aviv city, Israel. However, it can be easily retrofitted to any urban location, provided the necessary GIS layers are made available.

Reference

ParkGame is a joint effort lead by Prof Itzhak Benenson head of the Geosimulation and Spatial Analysis (GeoSA) Lab, at Tel-Aviv University together with Dr. Eran Ben-Elia head of the Gaming in Augmented Mobility Environments (GAMES) Lab at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Dr. Evgeny Medvedev (GeoSA) and Shay Ashkenazi (GeoSA).

ParkGame is the result of 'Studying Theoretical and Applied Problems of Urban Parking Using the PARKAGENT Spatially-Explicit Agent-Based Model', an ISF funded research project.

Run your own simulation

Everyone is invited to prepare its own situation specific ParkGame. This specific ParkGame can be made available again at this page as an additional case to be used by the spatial planning community. A standard automated routine is not yet established. It is advised to take these steps in close interaction with the Tel-Aviv team, being very willing to support you through-out the case development.

> Follow this link to find further instructions and to download the simulation game.

More information

For any further information you can contact Prof Itzhak Benenson at bennya@ccsg.tau.ac.il, or Dr. Eran Ben-Elia – benelia@bgu.ac.il

Source of information

Ben-Elia E., Medvedev E., Ashkenazi S., Levy N., Benenson I. (2015), Serious game-based study of urban parking dynamics, paper presented at XIII NECTAR International Conference, Ann Arbour Michigan.