Data-Driven Innovations in Smart and Safe Transportation Infrastructure

Dear Colleagues,

The continuous evolution of transportation systems is increasingly shaped by technological advancements, urbanization pressures, and the urgent global imperative to improve safety and sustainability. As urban mobility becomes more complex and multimodal, conventional infrastructure—built for predictable, unidirectional flows—faces limitations in addressing emerging safety challenges, real-time responsiveness, and human-centered adaptability.

In this context, smart transportation infrastructures have emerged as a transformative approach, integrating sensing, communication, data analytics, and adaptive control to improve operational efficiency and safety outcomes. Urbanization, climate pressures, and rapid technological adoption are fundamentally reshaping transportation ecosystems. Conventional infrastructure—designed for static, unimodal flows—struggles to address modern challenges, including (1) safety-critical gaps for vulnerable road users (pedestrians, cyclists), (2) real-time adaptability needs in mixed CAV/human environments, (3) data fragmentation across physical/digital infrastructure layers, and (4) emerging risks from cybersecurity threats and extreme weather

Meanwhile, transportation safety remains a critical concern worldwide, especially for vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists. While post-crash data analysis has long been the foundation of safety research, there is growing recognition of the need for proactive, real-time, and exposure-sensitive safety modeling. Recent advances in computer vision, deep learning, spatiotemporal analysis, and surrogate safety measures (e.g., time-to-collision, post-encroachment time) are enabling a paradigm shift, allowing infrastructure to serve not only as a passive carrier of mobility but as an active monitor, predictor, and mitigator of risk.

This Special Issue explores how data-driven smart infrastructure can bridge these gaps by integrating sensing (IoT, LiDAR, CV data), analytics (AI, computer vision, digital twins), and adaptive control (V2I, predictive safety interventions).We request papers that offer methodological innovations, empirical insights, simulation frameworks, or policy-relevant findings that advance our understanding of how infrastructure can be designed, operated, and governed to support safe, efficient, and equitable mobility in the era of intelligent transportation systems (ITSs).

Dr. Chenzhu Wang
Prof. Dr. Said M. Easa
Dr. Changjian Zhang
Dr. Zhipeng Peng
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Infrastructures is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.