The Challenges of Smart Cities
People are being drawn to cities more than ever before. In order to make life easier for the people, civic managers are starting to implement automation technology. Smart cities are one of the solutions to 21st century urbanization challenges. There are many benefits to be gained from supporting the development of smart cities such as increasing efficiency of processes, reducing waste output, increasing access to services, and more. The main technologies used to make different types of systems smarter in cities are artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and top of the line computing power. Now as the old saying goes, there are always two sides to a coin. Just because a new innovation seems perfect on the outside, does not mean it can have some intrinsic problems. There are a few glaring issues that I have identified with the development of intelligent cities that need to be considered, for example: making an informed decision on which technologies to use while new inventions are being made every day can be very difficult, finding the appropriate people who can handle and manage these smart services is not trivial, and there are also serious data security concerns that need to be constantly addressed.
It is important to remember that as our cities become more intelligent, they become more interconnected as well. This can cause privacy concerns for data use. Smart cities need to gather big data in order to analyze patterns. After analyzing various trends, the civic managers can decide what new services are exactly needed for their municipality. Who handles this data, how often is it updated, who checks the data for accuracy, and what is done with the data after it is used? These are all valid concerns citizens should have about the use of data that is related to them. Also, through greater connectivity comes a greater risk of a successful cyber attack on these types of cities. It can be seen that attacks against the IT systems of public sector authorities are on the rise continuously. The UK councils are being hit with 800 cyber attacks every hour according to a freedom of information request from an insurance broker. Another example that should raise concern is that many smart cities use IPnet in their operating systems, which has not been supported since 2006. IPnet is an operating system used in data management, that is open to attacks due to their lack of support for many years. Determining what security standards and legislations need to be implemented can be a tricky task and needs to be thought about carefully for the sake of the citizen’s privacy. The following image describes how malicious attackers can intercept data connections in order to obtain access to a lot of private information.
As mentioned before, another concern is the fast-paced nature of the technology boom we are experiencing today. Every day there are new innovations, so how does a city decide which smart technology to incorporate in their plans. How do we know what is the best technology to use? Do we even know if these technologies are 100% safe, given how fast they are released? Also, this ties in with another potential area for concern. Implementing these new technologies in cities requires a prepared workforce who can handle all of this. Having the right people ready is crucial for keeping an intelligent city up and running. These smart services need to be constantly maintained and monitored to make sure they are secure and safe. If the people monitoring these services have limited or insufficient understanding of these technologies, then the systems can be vulnerable in the future.
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