Smart Car Park

Try Before You Buy

About NDX

NDX (National Digital Exchange) is a government platform that helps public sector organisations discover, evaluate, and adopt digital solutions.

Overview

Learning Artifact: This is a pre-deployed demonstration environment for learning and exploration, not a production-ready product. Use it to understand how AWS IoT services can enable smart city infrastructure.

Deployed and ready - no setup required. When you request this sandbox, you’ll receive access to a fully configured IoT parking system that simulates sensor data and displays real-time availability.

This Smart Car Park scenario demonstrates how local authorities can use AWS IoT services to monitor parking availability in real-time, helping residents find spaces and councils manage parking assets more effectively.

What you’ll explore

This sandbox includes a working implementation using:

AWS IoT Core - Managed service for connecting and managing IoT devices (simulated parking sensors)
Amazon Timestream - Time-series database optimised for IoT data storage and queries
Amazon QuickSight - Real-time dashboards showing parking availability and trends
AWS Lambda - Serverless compute for processing sensor events
Amazon API Gateway - REST API for accessing parking data from apps and websites

In plain English: You’ll explore real-time parking availability using sensors and dashboards - see which spaces are free, track occupancy trends over time, and understand how data flows from sensors to applications.

Learn More

Before requesting your sandbox, explore the scenario documentation to understand what’s deployed and how to interact with it:

View Smart Car Park scenario details

Getting started

Select “Try this now for 24 hours” above
Accept the Acceptable Use Policy
Receive AWS SSO credentials via email
Access your sandbox environment through AWS Console
Follow the scenario guide to explore the IoT infrastructure and real-time dashboards

Why this matters for local government

Smart parking systems can:

Reduce traffic congestion by helping drivers find spaces faster
Improve revenue collection with accurate occupancy data for enforcement
Support planning decisions with data on parking usage patterns
Enhance resident experience with real-time availability information

This scenario lets you evaluate whether IoT-based parking monitoring could work for your council’s car parks.

Constraints

Budget limit: $50 maximum spend (sufficient for extensive exploration)
Duration: 24 hours from activation
Purpose: Evaluation only (non-production use)
No cost to you - the budget is provided by NDX:Try

Important Notes

Resource Lifecycle Warning: All resources in your sandbox will be automatically deleted when your session time expires OR when the budget limit is reached (whichever comes first). Do not store important data in this environment.

Before your session ends

Export any configurations or code snippets you want to keep
Take screenshots of dashboards and API responses
Document any insights about data flows and architecture
Note which aspects would work for your real parking facilities

How this was built

This scenario is built with open source infrastructure as code. You can view the CloudFormation template, understand how it works, and adapt it for your own needs.

View the source code on GitHub (opens in new tab)

Build your own

After exploring this pre-deployed scenario, use the Empty Sandbox to build your own solution from scratch. The Empty Sandbox gives you a clean AWS environment where you can experiment freely.

Explore more scenarios

Empty AWS Sandbox - Start fresh with a clean AWS environment
QuickSight Dashboard - Analytics and reporting
Council Chatbot - AI-powered resident services
Text to Speech - Accessibility audio generation

Troubleshooting

Try button not working? Make sure you’re signed in to NDX
Did not receive credentials? Check your spam folder, or wait a few minutes
Cannot access the scenario? Ensure you’re using the correct AWS region (us-east-1)
Budget exhausted early? Some services have higher costs - contact support if unexpected

Support

For technical issues during your sandbox session, contact the NDX team at ndx@dsit.gov.uk.