# Smart Intersections and Connected Autonomous Vehicles for Sustainable Smart Cities: A Brief Review
## 10 Conclusions  
Smart intersections are emerging as pivotal components of urban transport, integrating state-of-the-art technologies to create next-generation road transportation systems that seamlessly address modern mobility challenges. These intersections harness the potential of V2X communication, AI, IoT networks, and some smart sensing for better vehicle-to-infrastructure functions that support smoother traffic management, promote safety, and regard environmental circumstances. Integrating adaptive AI into traffic signal control significantly reduces urban congestion and enhances pedestrian safety. V2X communication effectively reduces collision risks. At the same time, multi-sensor fusion techniques utilizing LiDAR, radar, and thermal imaging enable the precise and reliable tracking of pedestrians and vehicles. The significance of their role in the basic building blocks of intelligent transport systems highlights the need for wide-reaching use and advancements in terms of technology. This comprehensive review of smart intersection designs highlights converging trends towards more innovative designs for adaptive traffic light control based on AI, predictive analytics regarding congestion management, and distributed non-sensor fusion for situational awareness. Operationally, smart intersections effectively prioritize public transportation modes, improving reliability and reducing delays. IoT-driven predictive maintenance, although highly beneficial in minimizing operational downtime and infrastructure lifecycle costs, demands substantial initial capital investments and sustained funding strategies, necessitating innovative public-private partnerships. Case studies from different countries display how automated intersections can be tailored to several urban contexts. These intersections have great potential. However, many challenges remain, and the most important of them is the requirement for stan  
Figure 5: Example of commutable and self-regulating smart intersection: the COM-Roundabout and its functional principles [268]. dard communication protocols, advanced security measures, and scalable deployment in resource-deprived areas. Also, merging human factors--driver behavior and pedestrian movement patterns together or user perception-- into their design is a field that must continue to be researched. However, given the pros and cons specified in this article, some recommendations are essential to help the future use of smart roads, in terms of the following:  
* Research towards an interdisciplinary approach to integrating transportation engineering, urban planning, and user behavior science for user-centric intelligent intersections;
* Developing international strategies to enable a better interoperable and integrated implementation of these intersections among different urban domains and transportation systems;
* Increasing data security and privacy: more significant levels of encryption protocols for cyber-physical intersections are critical, coupled with blockchain-based control and well-designed cybersecurity strategies that secure lanes against future threats while ensuring user privacy;
* Advocating for public-private partnerships: industry stakeholders should work alongside municipal governments and research institutions to advance innovation through public-private partnerships. When deploying smart intersections and V2X applications, important tradeoffs, such as improved efficiency, advanced AI-based optimization, and cybersecurity measures, need to be considered. Improved efficiency through optimized traffic flows can sometimes unintentionally be at the expense of pedestrians, cyclists, or public transport users, leading to a lack of fairness considerations. Similarly, advanced AI-based optimization can lead to public distrust by reducing transparency in decision-making processes, which can reduce the demand for improved system performance. Strong cybersecurity measures are also difficult to use in V2X systems, even though secure communication is necessary.