# Smart Pedestrian Crossing Management at Traffic Light Junctions through a Fuzzy-Based Approach
## 1 Introduction  
The Internet of Things (IoT) idea has piqued much interest from the research and industry community in the last few years [1]. One of the main reasons for this hype towards the IoT is its supposed applicability to different domains [2], like smart environments [3], smart homes [4], Industry 4.0 [5] or e-health [6]. Nevertheless, there is an application domain of the IoT, i.e., smart cities [7; 8], that is presumably standing out from the rest. A smart city is a mixed ecosystem distinguished by the exceptional administration of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), with the aim to develop cities more appealing and more sustainable, i.e., unique areas for innovation and entrepreneurship [9; 10]. The essential stakeholders involve application developers, service providers, citizens, government and public service providers, the research community and platform developers. Besides, it is clear that a smart city is composed of many ICT technologies, development platforms, solutions for maintenance and sustainability, apps for evolving citizens and technical, social, as well as economic key performance indicators. As a consequence, IoT schemes will represent a fundamental task in the deployment of large-scale heterogeneous infrastructures. IoT-based smart city applications can be classified by network type, flexibility, coverage, scalability, heterogeneity, repeatability and end-user involvements [11]. These applications can be arranged into personal and home, utilities, enterprises and mobile. For instance, mobile applications include Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) and logistics, traffic management, congestion control and waste management. Numerous research efforts have been conducted to combine the IoT with smart city environments. For instance, the growth of communications grids and the development of innovative schemes for production systems are analyzed in [12]. The authors point out that smart cities have become the basis for urban competitiveness nowadays, and ICT undoubtedly plays a fundamental role. Several ICT solutions are investigated focusing on their influence on new social behaviors that mold the means of communication and the development of urban areas. The main aim of the authors is to judge the various technologies applied in smart cities by their usefulness and importance. The factors influencing citizens' approval and adoption of ICT-based services for smart cities to enhance their quality of life are investigated in [13]. The obtained results show that if an ICT-based solution is of high quality, involves innovative ideas and ensures personal privacy, generally, the citizens tend to accept it and are willing to use it. The authors of [14] propose an edge-based platform as a useful IoT tool for the implementation of distributed applications for smart cities. The proposed solution can hide the heterogeneity of the associated physical devices and protocols. After validating their platform, the authors provide a set of design guidelines that could yield valuable advantages in developing services for smart cities, such as system extensibility, fault tolerance, integration of systems and system maintenance. The goal to make a city \"smart\" is rising as a possible solution to lessen the issues caused by the urban population growth and fast urbanization. In fact, academic research has examined this phenomenon [15]. For instance, the authors of [16] suggest a framework to understand the idea of smart cities to reduce the gap in the literature about them considering the increasing use of this concept. In fact, they recognize several critical characteristics concerning smart cities, such as organization and management, governance, technology, people and communities, policy context, economy, built infrastructure and natural environment. These factors establish the basis of the proposed framework that can be employed to investigate how local governments are envisioning initiatives for future smart cities.