Understanding how ANPR can solve your problems
ANPR stands for Automatic Number Plate Recognition and is a system that uses high-resolution cameras and sophisticated software to read the number plates of vehicles. One of the main uses of this data is to enforce parking contraventions. Monitoring entry and exit times for a vehicle can establish whether the motorist has paid for their parking or outstaying the maximum free parking limit.
Over recent years, private parking companies have increasingly started to turn to ANPR technology to solve their enforcement requirements. Some of the reasons for this include:
- ANPR cameras are easy to set up and provide consistent data to be passed directly onto a parking enforcement application
- ANPR systems have relatively low operating costs
- ANPR also reduces the need to employ as many on-site enforcement staff
- Parking management ANPR technology typically delivers 90% accuracy when reading number plates.
- However, advanced ANPR technologies like Zatpark have a “fuzzy matching” capability that delivers close to 100% accuracy.
Fuzzy matching is an intelligent ANPR technology developed to further enhance ANPR parking management systems. Fuzzy matching technology automatically creates and stores “near miss” variations of a vehicle number plate. A fuzzy match will include details of the vehicle’s make, model and colour. This allows administration staff to easily select the correct number plate from a system-generated list.
Fuzzy matching can increase the rate of positive matches to close to 100%. Zatpark’s ANPR checker offers fuzzy matching and has been designed for fast and effective checking of ANPR reads.
The wider uses of ANPR systems
ANPR technologies can not only be used for monitoring entry and exit information there are several other ways it’s used in parking management.
Advanced Car Park Management Systems
ANPR systems can monitor the use of each parking space, providing the parking management owner with real-time information on how many free spaces there are. It can also help ensure that motorists don’t drive around car parks searching for spaces. In fact, some smart car parks can direct vehicles to free spaces.
ANPR can also help to monitor contraventions within the car park, such as:
- drivers who park carelessly
- parking in a disabled bay
- monitoring electric vehicle bays to ensure they are being used appropriately.
Automated Online Payments and Cashless Parking
ANPR is starting to become a key part of automated payment applications. Parking payment applications can link a customer number plate to a payment method and will use an ANPR system to calculate a payment based on the parking period.
Car Park Access Control
Many organisations now use ANPR to monitor access to their company car parks. The ANPR camera system will grant access to their car parks by checking that the car number plate is on a permitted “allow list”. A typical use case would be where the number of allocated parking spaces for a business is insufficient for the number of staff drivers.
Looking to the Future
There is no doubt that cashless and online payment services are replacing many traditional payment methods with the obvious benefit of parking operators not storing pay and display machine cash on parking sites. Cashless parking payment systems allow motorists to pay for more parking without the need to rush back to their car park to buy another ticket which hugely improves ease of use and customer service.
With ANPR now being used as part of an ever-more integrated parking management, payment and enforcement network, its use is set to increase over the next few years and beyond.
Local Authority Digital Transformation Strategies
As of 2023, local authorities were not allowed to use ANPR cameras to enforce parking at on-street or off-street parking sites. Looking further ahead, the Smart Cities Initiative is attempting to use big data to increase the wellbeing and productivity of cities and is likely to utilise ANPR technology in its parking and traffic management activities.
Conclusion
There is little doubt that ANPR systems will continue to become increasingly common in the parking industry. To get the best out of your investment in ANPR technology, you should ensure that it is integrated with high-quality parking enforcement software. This will allow you to take advantage of the powerful productivity benefits of your parking enforcement tools to reduce costs and improve efficiency.
