PuLS

The research project PuLS (Parken und Laden in der Stadt; English: Park and Charge in the City) investigates means to facilitate the access to charging infrastructure for electric vehicles by simultaneously reducing the air pollution in city centres and traffic resulting from parking space searches. Charging infrastructure is therefore equipped with innovative sensors for capturing parking space data and installed at private parking spaces in Dortmund’s Kreuzviertel. This urban quarter is characterized by a great volume of parking search traffic and private parking spaces, as well as residents with a positive attitude towards electromobility.

Figure 1 shows the interaction between persons and technical components within the PuLS solution proposal.

A central component of the research project is the PuLS platform, a service-based software system being realized by IDiAL. The platform integrates sensor data gathered from charging infrastructure and provides interfaces for subsequent data processing by external information and communication systems. Moreover, it implements various, project-specific use cases.

Within one use case, owners of private charging infrastructure are to be allowed for sharing their infrastructure with other drivers of electric vehicles. To this end, the PuLS platform implements a web-based graphical user interface, with which users may offer their charging infrastructure for use by others over a certain period of time and for a determined fee. Drivers of electric vehicles may book available charging infrastructure under the offered conditions and the PuLS platform will enable charging within the agreed period of time after drivers have arrived at their reserved infrastructure. This use case is motivated by the fact that a large number of Kreuzviertel residents leaves the quarter by car to get to work. Their private parking spaces and existing charging infrastructure would thus be available to external visitors in the Kreuzviertel on  working days.

Another use case to be supported by the PuLS platform is the provisioning of parking spaces and environmental data. For the latter, charging infrastructure is equipped with additional, specialized sensors. Based on the resulting combination of parking space and environmental sensors, the PuLS platform integrates functionality that enables local environmental officers to identify and analyze hotspots of parking space search traffic and air pollution. Consequently, measures to reduce motor vehicle emissions in city centres can be carried out more purposefully, e.g., by a targeted optimization of traffic flow control in particularly polluted areas of selected urban quarters.

In addition to the implementation of the PuLS platform, IDiAL as a project partner also takes over the implementation of the described use cases.

• DEW21