A Decision Support System for Parking Lot Location Problems in Metropoles: A Case Study in Istanbul

The increasing number of vehicles due to rapid population growth in many cities of the world leads to an increase of the transportation problems. Car parks, which play a regulatory role in transportation, should be in optimum locations and quantities in order to alleviate traffic and transportation problems as much as possible in metropoles. In this study, first we consider the parking problem in Istanbul, city with the highest population and facing the most transportation problems in Turkey, and then propose a Decision Support System (DSS) to determine the most suitable places for car parking. The DSS is based on successive usage of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Geographical Information System (GIS). To this end, the inputs such as proximities of parking lots to roads, shopping centers, health facilities, public transportation stops and parking occupancy rate were collected. We firstly use the AHP method to weight the specified criteria according to their importance. Afterwards, by including the determined criteria as map layers, we develop GIS-based DSS that aims to determine the districts and regions where parking is most needed. Our study is expected to provide an efficient insight in tackling with opening new parking lots problem in regarding to needs.