# Smart Pedestrian Crossing Management at Traffic Light Junctions through a Fuzzy-Based Approach
## 1 Introduction
On the contrary, the authors of [17] highlight that the use of big data has the potential to achieve notable results for smart cities, simultaneously with innovative services and products, higher competitiveness and economic progress. Nevertheless, the exploitation of big data in transport is at a significantly lower level compared to other areas such as retail and healthcare. Although numerous studies exist about IoT and smart cities, the convergence of these two areas needs further academic efforts for the thriving of IoT-based smart cities. Nevertheless, the application fields of IoT-based solutions are plentiful. For this reason, it is beneficial to develop approaches that are proper and smart to handle one of the many issues that concern ITS. Among them, it is worth noting that of the pedestrian crossing. A pedestrian crossing (British English) or crosswalk (American English) is a part of the road painting and is designated for pedestrians to cross a road. Crosswalks are usually outlined to retain pedestrians together where motorists can see them and wherever they can pass most safely over the flow of vehicular traffic. Marked pedestrian crossings are usually located at intersections at grade, but may also be at other positions on bustling roads that, otherwise, would be too risky to cross without a support due to vehicle numbers, speed or road widths. Crosswalks are also usually situated where a considerable number of pedestrians is striving to cross, for instance near shopping areas, or where exposed road users (such as school children) frequently cross. It is clear that specific rules are needed for the use of the pedestrian crossings to ensure safety. For instance, in some areas, the pedestrian must be more than halfway across the crosswalk before the driver proceeds. Signalized pedestrian crossings are employed to divide traffic types, i.e., pedestrians or road vehicles, that use the road junction. On the contrary, un-signalized crossings habitually support pedestrians and usually prioritize them. The pedestrian crossings are one of the most dangerous places in the transport field. In fact, most of the traffic accidents happen there. In urban areas, especially in inner cities, pedestrians crossing the road unquestionably affect the traffic flows. For this reason, several approaches have been developed for the detection of traffic and pedestrian flows at traffic lights [18; 19; 20]. Generally, for several reasons, the priority should be assigned to pedestrians. However, as highlighted in [21], the inclination to give pedestrians a high priority in crosswalks influences the road traffic capacity considerably. The authors have examined several distances between pedestrian crossings to determine their assessment; a non-constant inter-crosswalk spacing is also considered. The analysis carried out in [22] shows that more and more pedestrians use mobile phones in their daily activities. This action is a real distraction for pedestrians when they are going to cross the street, especially at un-signalized intersections. The authors of [23] show that, in the class of unsafe road users, the pedestrians are identified as those with the most significant chance to be influenced by severe or fatal casualties in road accidents. Nevertheless, there are several factors to be analyzed. First of all is the randomness of users' behavior. Moreover, sometimes, the inadequate attention of traffic light operation settings implies that the pedestrians are involved in road accidents, in particular in isolated signalized junctions. As a consequence, there is a clear need for new and intelligent systems to play a fundamental role in the improvement of pedestrian safety. ICT-based solutions can undoubtedly be an excellent support in developing infrastructure that can best manage pedestrian crossing. For instance, a method for crosswalk marking detection by using laser-based applications for intelligent vehicles systems, as well as pedestrian security, is proposed in [24].