Copenhagen has hundreds of commercial parking spaces spread across the city. For a long time, no one knew how they were actually being used. Without sensors, there was no reliable way to find out.
The Challenge
Copenhagen’s commercial parking spaces serve the tradespeople, delivery drivers, and service vehicles the city depends on. But without accurate occupancy data, understanding how those spaces performed was largely a matter of guesswork.
Existing methods relied on indirect observation and manual checks, producing an incomplete and inconsistent picture. The city could not identify peak demand, spot underused areas, or allocate capacity based on evidence. Planning decisions were made without the information to support them.
At the same time, the drivers using these spaces had no way to find them reliably. They circled. They doubled back. In a city that takes congestion seriously, that search traffic was a measurable and avoidable problem.
The Solution
Sensade deployed 423 NB-IoT top-mount sensors across 221 commercial parking areas in Copenhagen. Each sensor is mounted directly on the asphalt and detects occupancy in real time, transmitting data continuously to the Sensade dashboard.
Through the Sensade dashboard, the city has access to live and historical data at every level, from individual bays to entire areas. Key metrics include occupancy rate, arrivals, departures, flow index, and average parking duration. Data can be filtered, analysed over time, and exported via API.
Sensade also built a dedicated mobile app for commercial drivers, showing available spaces in real time and guiding them directly to where they need to go. The app connects the sensor data to the people who depend on it every day.
The Impact
For commercial drivers, the change is immediate. Real-time guidance means fewer wasted trips and a more predictable experience in a city where time on the road has a direct cost.
For Copenhagen, the project delivers something more fundamental: ownership. The city now has a continuous, accurate picture of how its commercial parking infrastructure is used, enabling better allocation, more responsive planning, and a reduction in unnecessary congestion.
The data the sensor network has generated has already shaped investment decisions. In October 2025, the City Council voted unanimously to expand sensor-based parking management across Copenhagen, covering new categories of spaces including disabled bays, EV spaces without chargers, and car-sharing areas.
Built to Build On
What Copenhagen has established is not just a way to monitor parking. It is a data infrastructure that makes better urban decisions possible. The sensor network Sensade deployed is the foundation the city is now actively building on, across mobility, sustainability, and public space.
The Results
- Real-time occupancy data across all commercial spaces
- Reduced driver search traffic
- Full city data ownership
- Driver app for real-time space guidance
- City council approval to expand sensor deployment across new space categories
