A Computer Vision-Based Parking Management System for Urban Developing Cities: A Focus on Lagos

Parking management remains a major challenge in developing urban environments, especially in Lagos, Nigeria. This could be linked to the significant investment that people perceive it requires. This project presents a simple yet effective computer vision-based parking management system intended for urban developing cities, focusing on Lagos as an example. Firstly, parking spots are identified and marked when not occupied by cars. The surface areas of the marked spots are then saved. During real-time tracking, these saved surface areas are compared with their current state. If there is a significant change—70 per cent of the pixels of the saved surface area have been altered—then the system triggers that a car has occupied a given spot and updates the dashboard in real-time. An intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) allows administrators to integrate parking spaces for real-time and virtual analysis. At the same time, drivers can query the system to obtain information regarding available spaces in real-time. This solution aims to address the challenges observed in traditional parking systems, such as vehicle congestion, time inefficiency, and lack of due process.