Urban Sprawl

By Rick Seiden

RFID has been used in many familiar applications. From tracking pallets, airport luggage, and a multitude of asset tracking applications, RFID has quickly been integrated into industry, manufacturing, and logistics. RFID is now spreading into urban areas. One of its uses within towns and cities is parking solutions. Tracking the storage and movement of automobiles using RFID is not all that different from tracking assets such as inventory and pallets. So parking is a logical place for RFID to begin appearing in the built landscape.

Parking technologies have been fairly stagnant since Carl Magee of Oklahoma City introduced the first parking meter. Mr. Magee filed for a patent for a "coin controlled parking meter" on May 13, 1935, and the patent (#2,118,318) was issued May 24, 1938. Mr. Magee understood that parking would become a scarce and valuable resource that must be managed to meet the needs of residents and visitors, while addressing land use and commercial activities.

In the 21st Century, parking programs can generate considerable revenue for municipalities and control a competitive resource. Sophisticated networked parking systems are quickly replacing the parking meter. In many communities pay-by-space metering systems are becoming much more widespread. Pay-by-space technology requires that someone who occupies a parking space must enter his or her unique space number into a kiosk. Although this technology is new, it may become obsolete as new systems can read RFID tags directly, not requiring human interaction.

RFID Enabled Parking Permits
Much like other industries, local governments and parking authorities are beginning to utilize RFID technology in parking permits. By embedding RFID tags within the city issued permits (which are typically placed on a car's windshield), parking enforcement officials can use handheld RFID readers to determine whether a car is legally parked and properly registered. By using RFID technologies, parking enforcement personnel no longer need to leave their vehicle in order to check permits. Without this technology, officers or other parking personnel would have to take the time to read each permit on every parked vehicle by looking at each parked car's permit.

In Hoboken, NJ — a town of approximately 40,000 residents south of New York City — parking officials were challenged by distinguishing resident parking stickers from visitors and noticed a recent rise in illegal and counterfeit permits. Tinted windshields also provided a particular challenge. On-street parking in Hoboken has become more scarce and valuable over the past several years.

The city selected Symbol Technology's (now Motorola) RFID Permit Management software running on RFID rugged mobile computers. This system has allowed Hoboken parking officials to rapidly read the parking permit information stored on a vehicle's windshield RFID tag to easily identify illegally parked vehicles and those using counterfeit permits. John Corea, Hoboken's Director of Parking, said that the city earns about $20 million in revenue from parking permits and parking fines. The city spent about $50,000 installing the RFID equipment and software, and Corea expects it to reap more than $1 million in savings.

It now easier for residents to renew their parking permits. Permits can be renewed online and the city issues fewer permits since the RFID sticker stays with the car. Residents have taken a liking to the system because of the ease of renewing their permits online and the fact that the days of counterfeit permits and the number of illegally parked vehicles are in the past.

RFID Parking Payment Cards
Paying for parking is now evolving quickly. For roughly the past 70 years, the only way to "feed the meter" was usually by scrambling for coins in your pocket, purse, or car's ashtray. Then in the early 21st Century, many parking meters allowed for a card with a magnetic strip to be swiped in the meter to make payment. Now, contactless RFID-enabled smart cards (often called "proximity cards") allow parking to be paid by simply waving the card in front of the meter.

These cards come with numerous benefits for both citizens and municipalities. Municipalities can eliminate coin collection or do it much less frequently. These systems also allow municipalities to use a card credit refresh system, a debit card model, or even create monthly parking statements. Municipalities can even disable these RFID smart cards if one has excessive parking tickets or an expired driver's license.

RFID and Parking Access Control
RFID technology is rapidly gaining ground in the access control of industry cars, trucks, or other vehicles tagged with passive RFID transmitters. This reduces manpower by tracking when and who enters restricted areas and allowing for certain vehicles to be admitted to controlled areas while others are denied entrance. The technology is fairly straight forward. When a restricted area or a parking lot entrance is approached, a reader at the site accesses the RFID tag. If the vehicle is authorized, the gate opens and it is allowed the vehicles to pass. Examples of its uses are equipping police vehicles with RFID readers allowing only those cars to enter a restricted police-only parking lot. For urban parking facilities, RFID readers not only allow entry by opening automatically opening the gate, but can debit a user's account based on when a vehicle enters and exits the parking facility.

In the next decade, RFID will appear in many municipal applications from tracking municipal waste to event access. However today, parking solutions are one of the first places in the urban landscape that RFID technologies will take hold.

Rick Seiden is President of Towntech, Inc. (www.towntechinc.com), an urban planning and community technology firm focused on planning, designing, and deploying technologies into communities, towns, and cities. Contact him at 888-475-0888 or rick@towntechinc.com.

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Checkpoint Systems to Acquire OATSystems

Checkpoint Systems, Inc. (www.checkpointsystems.com) — a manufacturer and marketer of identification, tracking, security, and merchandising solutions for the retail industry and its supply chain — announces that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire OATSystems, Inc. (www.oatsystems.com) — a provider of RFID-based application software and middleware whose international client base consists of leading companies in the retail, consumer products, consumer electronics, manufacturing, life sciences, aerospace, and defense industries. The all cash transaction is expected to close within two weeks. Checkpoint expects the transaction to be dilutive to earnings per share through 2009 and accretive thereafter.

Checkpoint and OATSystems offer complementary merchandise protection and inventory management applications that together strengthen their combined presence in the retail market. For retail customers, OATSystems solutions help turn large quantities of data from RFID hardware into meaningful and actionable information. These solutions enable retailers to enhance operational efficiency by obtaining accurate perpetual inventory levels, ensuring on-shelf availability of merchandise that is seamlessly integrated within the framework of existing loss prevention strategies and practices.

"With this acquisition, Checkpoint is once again redefining the scope of Shrink Management," says Rob van der Merwe, President and Chief Executive Officer, Checkpoint Systems, Inc. "The addition of OATSystems builds upon our previously announced strategy to help retailers and their suppliers migrate more easily with our Evolve™ Electronic Article Surveillance platform to Electronic Product Code RFID. As our industry moves to a common EPC standard, Checkpoint with the addition of OATSystems' capabilities will now be able to offer solutions that enable retailers and their supply chains to gain deeper inventory visibility — further reducing shrink and increasing bottom-line profits by enhancing on-shelf merchandise availability for consumers."

Senior management of OATSystems, including Michael George, President and Chief Executive Officer of OATSystems, will continue to operate the business as a division of Checkpoint. The company will continue to use and develop the OATSystems brand and software platform to serve retail, consumer products, and industrial customers. Mr. George states: "Combined with Checkpoint's global resources and leadership, we will be better positioned to help customers optimize their operations and achieve their goals."

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Psion Teklogix and N4 Systems Partner to Provide Real-Time Safety Compliance and Inspection Management Solutions

Psion Teklogix (www.psionteklogix.com), a global provider of wireless computing solutions, and N4 Systems, Inc. (www.n4systems.com), a provider of real-time safety compliance and inspection management solutions, announce a partnership to service the highly-regulated safety compliance and electronic inspection markets. Integrating N4 Systems' Field ID software with Psion Teklogix' WORKABOUT PRO and Ikôn PDA rugged mobile devices, the companies offer customers, in a range of industrial markets, accurate and efficient paperless field inspection and real-time safety compliance solutions.

Paper-based field inspections are difficult to track; they can get lost, aren't available in real-time, and don't offer easy access to government agencies who may want to review them. In addition, retyping data into a computer is labor intensive and prone to error. The Psion Teklogix and N4 Systems offering will allow users to electronically record and automatically create inspection reports in the field to determine the status of their safety compliance in real time. N4 Systems' Field ID system uses multiple technologies to create a fully-integrated enterprise application. The system includes RFID for asset identification and Psion Teklogix' rugged handheld computers with 3G WWAN, WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS connectivity, as well as an integrated camera option. The application also features highly secure data management, distribution and storage, remote system management and support, and optimized high speed World Wide Web network integration.

Hundreds of mining, oil and gas, automotive, and utilities sites in North America — including Certex USA, Commercial Group Lifting Products, Unirope, Hercules SLR, Key Constructors, and the Crane Inspection & Certification Bureau — are using the N4 Systems and Psion Teklogix solution. With increasing government requirements for ongoing inspections, cranes have emerged as a new market. Crane inspections involve hundreds of different parts unique to the individual piece of equipment, and the difficulty of determining which inspection criteria matches a particular piece of equipment is substantial. Mobile data collection in the field on a handheld device improves the efficiency, management, and reporting for safety compliance.

"By eliminating the problems of paper-based inspections, our solution not only saves time and money, it saves lives," says Somen Mondal, President & CEO of N4 Systems.