DETERMINING THE OPTIMUM PARKING ANGLES FOR VARIOUS RECTANGULAR-SHAPED PARKING AREAS: A PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION-BASED MODEL

Reducing financial costs as much as possible through the effective and efficient use of parking areas is an important issue for sustainable urban planning. This can be achieved by optimizing the placement of angles of parking-lots. In this study, to determine the optimum parking angles for rectangular-shaped parking areas, a Particle Swarm Optimization-based model that aims to maximize the capacity of parking areas is developed. In the scope of the study, firstly, 324 parking area scenarios which have different dimensions from each other are created for testing the effectiveness of the model developed. Each scenario is separately analyzed by considering the optimization-based model and fixed-parking angles (0o, 30o, 45o, 60o and 90o) used in parking area planning. In the last step, parking area capacities obtained by applying different parking angles for each scenario and the total parking capacities for all scenarios are compared in detail. Results show that the capacities of parking areas can be increased up to approximately 50% with the model created. Besides, in contrast to existing literature, the findings of this study have proven that the optimum parking angle directly depends on the topology of the land. The model developed can be applied to all rectangular-shaped parking areas to achieve better urban planning.