Uncertainty-Aware Parking Prediction Using Bayesian Neural Networks

Parking availability prediction is a critical component of intelligent transportation systems, aiming to reduce congestion and improve urban mobility. While traditional deep learning models such as Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks have been widely applied, they lack mechanisms to quantify uncertainty, limiting their robustness in real-world deployments. This paper proposes a Bayesian Neural Network (BNN)-based framework for parking occupancy prediction that explicitly models both epistemic and aleatoric uncertainty. Although BNNs have shown promise in other domains, they remain underutilised in parking prediction-likely due to the computational complexity and the absence of real-time context integration in earlier approaches. Our approach leverages contextual features, including temporal and environmental factors, to enhance uncertainty-aware predictions. The framework is evaluated under varying data conditions, including data scarcity (90%, 50%, and 10% of training data) and synthetic noise injection to simulate aleatoric uncertainty. Results demonstrate that BNNs outperform other methods, achieving an average accuracy improvement of 27.4% in baseline conditions, with consistent gains under limited and noisy data. Applying uncertainty thresholds at 20% and 30% further improves reliability by enabling selective, confidence-based decision making. This research shows that modelling both types of uncertainty leads to significantly improved predictive performance in intelligent transportation systems and highlights the potential of uncertainty-aware approaches as a foundation for future work on integrating BNNs with hybrid neuro-symbolic reasoning to enhance decision making under uncertainty.