Stakeholders, such as city authorities, companies, experts and planners have to make various complex decisions in the urban planning process, with designing sustainable and future-proof road infrastructures being one of the many complicated tasks. An example includes design decisions for scope and suitable locations for parking and choosing appropriate tariffs.

A complicating factor is that design decisions should take into account the future responses of the population. For example, when additional free parking locations are created for people visiting the beach, it may very well be the case that other people start using the cheap parking for shopping purposes. Therefore, to improve evaluations of urban designs while considering and better predicting the (potential) user responses of a population in the process, digital support could be incorporated. This can be done via modelling and simulations, where optimization, e.g. of potential parking locations, can be applied to urban design decisions. Digital twinning platforms can accelerate and improve spatial planning in the urban environment by extracting information from improved, interactive computer models, while also taking into account various responses of various user groups. In that respect, parking policies, management and fees, smart parking solutions can also be tested in order to identify their impacts on the transport system.

With respect to smart parking, already various tools for its applicability: apps (PaaS), IoT/sensor technology, the use of real-time data for parking availability etc.

All the above can contribute to behavioural change through emission-based parking fees, as an incentive to use lower or zero-emission vehicles, more efficient mobility planning leading to shorter journeys and thus easing congestion of traffic, as less people are circulating to look for parking.