FAQs
How accurate are the parking spots found by the ParkZen API?
ParkZen determines parking in two different ways: (a) by monitoring a user's smartphone connection to their car's bluetooth, and (b) by processing the user's smartphone motion & activity data to determine when they are leaving a parking spot or once they have parked. Parking availability is calculated within pre-determined geographical regions that can be adjusted for the specific needs of our partners and determined based on where there is higher demand for parking within a certain city. Our beta testing shows an impressive 96% success rate in determining available parking spots in real-time and within 15-30 feet (5-10 meter) accuracy.
Does running the ParkZen API drain the phone battery?
ParkZen takes pride in having created the most energy-efficient smartphone background parking detection technology. We achieve this by only requesting high location accuracy data for a limited amount of time, starting from when a user enters a pre-determined parking area (defined as a geofence) and stopping when the user is found to have parked, typically within 1-5 minutes. We then activate our software in the background only when a user is found to leave a parking activity area showing their spot as available on a map in real-time. Our beta testing has shown that the average battery usage on an iPhone 12 over a period of 10 days is less than 1%!
Does ParkZen respect the privacy of its users?
The ParkZen API does not collect any personal and sensitive information about our partners' users. We do not collect user identity and full location history and only the geolocations of their parking spots along with their respective timestamps are sent to our database. As such, the privacy of our users is 100% respected and protected while using ParkZen. For more details please check our Privacy Policy.
How can I utilize the ParkZen AI-Driven Parking Insights Service©?
The ParkZen AI-Driven Parking Insights Service© offered to our Professional Plan partners greatly enhances our standard ParkZen Live Parking Availability Service©. This added service utilizes our historical parking data to predict parking availability in advance. This is done by layering a heat-map on top of the existing ParkZen map to guide users through the most optimal parking search route within a congested region.
How accurate are the parking lot occupancies reported by ParkZen?
ParkZen uses statistical methods and machine learning to calculate parking lot occupancies based on the number of ParkZen users that historically park in a serviced parking facility. As such, the higher the number of users parked, the more accurate the occupancy estimates. Our testing has shown that parking lot occupancies can be estimated within a 4-8% accuracy for lots where about a third of the parking spots are utilized by our users, which is great considering that we offer this information for all lots and garages within our clients premises where the installation of hardware-based systems would be too expensive and impractical.