A little AI model with big community benefits
How the City of Adelaide and Orikan teamed up to solve a parking problem caused by the humble typo.
Parking managers across the globe are switching to digital parking solutions – and for good reason. Digital solutions are often more sustainable, cost less, and make motorists’ lives easier.
Like many local councils, the City of Adelaide introduced new ‘pay-by-plate’ meters to reap the benefits of a digital and ticketless solution, like improved workflows, reduced paper use and real-time data. But after it was rolled out, Council noticed a different problem – a rise in waived expiations (or infringements). The meters require motorists to enter their vehicles’ licence plate number, and with that came the risk of typing errors.
That parking problem was this: motorists would enter their car’s licence plate number into the new meter to pay for parking, but typing errors would attach legitimate payments to the wrong licence plate. Parking officers would check a licence plate, determine no payment had been made, and issue an infringement. The fine would then be contested. The City of Adelaide could see community members were trying to do the right thing, so naturally, the infringement would be waived.
But the rise in waived infringements diminished the customer experience for motorists who had to go through the motions of contesting their ticket. Each infringement also increased the workload for administrative and customer service staff. The City of Adelaide brought this problem to Orikan with hopes of collaborating on a solution.
By partnering with Orikan, they created a clever artificial intelligence model to help: the PinForce Predictive Search Module. The model uses mathematical matching to check the entry and develops a list of closely matched vehicle registrations that have been entered and paid for. A parking officer can then review the matches and use their own judgement to assess the likelihood of human error.
This solution is unique because it fixes human errors before they become a problem, and sometimes without the customer even noticing. It reduces administrative burden, improves customer experience and trims wasted time and resources for officers in the field. And for councils, the module is affordable and operates within officers’ existing handheld devices – no additional hardware required.
As for the City of Adelaide, so far the PinForce Predictive Search Module has reduced the Council’s infringements waived due to typing errors by more than half. If you’d like to learn more about our PinForce Predictive Search model and how it could help your community, please contact Orikan.
