Cleverciti Systems recently expanded its core team and appointed David Parker as its Chief Operating Officer. Parker, who has held senior-level roles and advisory positions with a wide range of high-growth tech businesses, is joining the company to help scale their technology and drive more growth.
Parker was associated with Cox Automotive, as COO of Modix, the leading global automotive digital marketing solution. At Modix, he led the expansion of the business across more than 60 countries. Parker’s academic credentials include MBAs from Columbia University and London Business School and a B.S. in Information Technology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
"When I met the Cleverciti team, I was immediately struck by their passion for improving quality of life by reducing pollution and traffic,” said Parker. “Approximately 30% of traffic in cities is the result of a parking search, which can be eliminated largely through the adoption of Cleverciti’s platform. Climate change is the crisis of our time, and we need solutions like Cleverciti to reduce emissions dramatically.”
We asked Parker to share his vision for advanced smart parking systems with us, and here’s what he had to say.
Which cities are leading in offering smart parking solutions?
We have seen a number of cities around the world implementing cutting-edge smart parking solutions, including Cleverciti’s innovative parking sensor and guidance solutions. A few of the recent examples include: Banff in Canada, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, Berlin in Germany, and Bad Hersfeld, which is near Frankfurt, Germany.
What can we learn from those deployments?
We have seen incredible benefits in cities that have implemented smart parking solutions. Approximately 30 percent of urban traffic is the result of drivers looking for a parking spot; so, solutions that reduce or eliminate the parking search have a direct impact on quality of life and our environment. Organizations have seen significant reductions in parking search traffic and emissions, and higher consumer satisfaction from retail shoppers. While these outcomes may not be surprising, we have also seen increased parking revenues as a result of implementing Cleverciti solutions, due to both drivers being more likely to pay for parking in exchange for receiving good service and from more efficient filling of the available parking spaces.
How are smart parking initiatives being funded – privately, publicly or a combination of the two?
Recently, we have seen a wide variety of funding models, reinforcing both how new these solutions are, and how many stakeholders receive benefits from implementing smart parking solutions. Funding comes from the city, the utility that owns the light poles where smart parking solutions can be mounted, from regional or federal subsidies, and through realizing increased parking revenues. It is important for smart city companies like Cleverciti to be flexible in how they work with a city or parking facility.
What enhancements can we look forward to from Clevericiti?
Cleverciti has recently launched the ClevericitiCard and the CIRC360. The card enables location sensing, wayfinding, digital permits and frictionless payment. Before introducing the Card, Cleverciti’s solutions to reduce traffic and emissions were limited to on-street and surface lot applications. With the Card, we have extended Cleverciti’s solutions suite to cover nearly any parking model, including garages.
The CIRC360 is an innovative screen that allows for a combination of smart city data, messaging, and advertising. The screen wraps around existing lamp posts, allowing for quick and easy installation, and clear communications of critical data, such as guiding a driver to the nearest space.
How does Cleverciti work with smart city ecosystems?
Open collaboration and support for modern interoperability standards is crucial in today’s Smart City environments. At the pole, we are integrated with light management systems such as Itron. We use a wide variety of communications technologies, from Itron’s network to existing WiFi or LTE. We were built from the ground up to run through the cloud, enabling open REST APIs that can be used to integrate with any third party. Also, as one of the primary communications devices, the CIRC360 can display far more than parking data: for example, it can report on air quality values as reported by third party sensors, display advertising, or even emergency messaging to ensure real-time communications between a city and its inhabitants.
Ken Briodagh is a storyteller, writer and editor with about two decades of experience under his belt. He is in love with technology and if he had his druthers would beta test everything from shoe phones to flying cars.
Edited by
Ken Briodagh
