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 Are you interested in the privacy and security aspects of smart city solutions?

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Our summary today works with the article titled Perception of the quality of smart city solutions as a sense of residents’ safety from 2021 by Justína Zywiolek and Francesco Schiavone, published in the Energies journal. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how to examine the safety and level of satisfaction for the smart city. This article presents a methodology for examining residents’ satisfaction and potential threats in order to investigate undefined desires and identified and confirmed needs.

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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper. Stay tuned until because I will give you the 3 most important things and some questions which would be interesting to discuss.

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Cities as a place of energy management play a huge role in the social and economic life of each country. Progressive urbanisation leads to changes and development of suburban zones leads to a reduction in the level of efficiency in areas related to energy consumption, waste management and sustainable development. Also, prosperity in various dimensions of society will translate into a change and improvement in urban quality of life as well as energy management processes in cities and individual households. Thus, cities are becoming increasingly complex, elaborate and multifaceted structures. Cities will use modern technologies and intelligent solutions to accommodate such requirements.

As a result, the idea of a smart city is implemented quite successively at various stages. Currently, smart cities and smart city communities can be defined as systems of people that interact and use the flows of energy, materials, services and financing to catalyse a sustainable economy, development, resilience and high quality of life. The smart city term itself assumes that the characteristic features are the high competitiveness, intelligent urban and suburban transport, sustainable and economic use of resources, a developed society, and sufficiently high quality of life and public management based on intelligent solutions. The challenge for smart city is to ensure an appropriate level of safety and security which is a necessary condition met by the city authorities. Not just physical, but emerging threats like hacking, privacy and security. This is often data that cities have not yet dealt with sofar.

Earlier empirical results show that the resident satisfaction increases when they perceive the city, intelligent solutions and its image as positive, good and correct. Smart city projects involve the implementation of a number of data-gathering components which is crucial for increasing safety and security of city energy management. It also presents challenges such as the residents’ fear of violating their privacy. Perceiving risk and fear of privacy loss may induce people to avoid smart city solutions, question their quality and intention. Past studies emphasized that residents’ satisfaction rose when they viewed their city’s intelligent solutions positively. This article presents the activities shaping a creative and intelligent city area and the space around it in Poland, Italy and Portugal, especially in terms of energy security, user safety and data privacy for smart energy solutions.

The research proposes four hypotheses: (H1) security in energy management apps influences city image positively, (H2) the ease of using such applications enhances the perceived quality of smart cities, (H3) diverse energy management services impact the perception of safety positively, and (H4) perceived quality of smart solutions boosts residents’ sense of security. To test these hypotheses, a two-part survey was distributed to a select sample in the three countries, which evaluated attributes of smart cities and individual perceptions regarding quality, safety, and trust. A specific model was applied to gauge satisfaction levels, distinguishing features into various categories, such as “must-have” attributes and “one-dimensional” attributes, among others. This model aided in discerning the residents’ preferences concerning the features of smart city solutions.

Residents underscored the importance of essential city attributes, like intelligent transport and technology, and sustainable development. Moreover, while assessing the sense of security, risk analysis played a pivotal role, highlighting the necessity of proactive risk management strategies in smart cities. Threats to the attributes, like delays in urban mobility were also investigated, and intelligent transport was associated with the highest level of risk. Without the specific attributes, a city cannot be smart according to the participants. Even though the individual cities do not have identical solutions, they have a common goal, ensuring energy security for the residents of smart cities and thus joint reduction of energy consumption.

Currently, cities that are not online, do not care about the safety and development of their city are less attractive to residents and investors. Another factor forcing changes in cities is the need to manage energy. Such transformation is aimed at more thoughtful and effective management of all resources. Doing so will allow for less pressure and environmental impact. Smart city can help with these aspects. Residents need to be aware of technological developments, but their security and privacy must be respected for smart growth to happen. The quality elements of a service have positive impact on the perceived quality of the service. While smart solutions provide long-term benefits, ensuring a balance between the availability of modern intelligent solutions and the sense of security among residents, the sense of privacy and freedom cannot be disturbed.

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What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Do you have any follow up question? Let me know on Twitter at WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the transcripts and show notes are available! Additionally, I will highly appreciate if you consider subscribing to the podcast or on the website. I hope this was an interesting paper for you as well, and thanks for tuning in!

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Finally, as the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. Smart cities and smart city communities can be defined as systems of people that interact and use the flows of energy, materials, services and financing to catalyse a sustainable economy, development, resilience and high quality of life.
2. Perceiving risk and fear of privacy loss may induce people to avoid smart city solutions, question their quality and intention, and past studies emphasized that residents’ satisfaction rose when they viewed their city’s intelligent solutions positively.
3. The urban transformation to smart cities and better urban asset and resource management needs to incorporate citizens and their perceived risks to their privacy and security which cannot be disturbed.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. How smart of a city do you live in based on the description above?
2. What are the must-have attributes for you for a city to be smart?
3. How safe and secure is your city regarding your privacy?
4. How are you sharing your opinion and data in your city securely?

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