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Foreign “smart cities” could face GDPR fines for misusing EU citizens' data, a Government smart city tsar has warned. 

Dr Jacqui Taylor, strategic advisor to the UK Government on smart cities, said that public bodies and companies based abroad could face fines worth millions of pounds if they fail to follow strict rules which protect EU residents from data misuse.

Transgressors can be fined 4pc of annual global turnover or €20m (£17.4m), whichever is greater.

Cities elsewhere in the world face being “called to account if something goes wrong”, she said, with British citizens able to complain to UK regulator the Information Commissioner if they think their rights have been infringed. 

Smart cities across the globe are beginning to collect data from residents and visitors to monitor purchasing, public transport and services use, but there has been controversy about how the data is managed and whether there is enough transparency about what it is used for. 

Dr Taylor, the chief executive of web science company Flying Binary, said she had also been advising cities in the Middle East on their responsibilities. 

“They took it very seriously because they understood that as a European citizen, if I'm out there, they'll be called to account if something goes wrong, or if I decided that I want a change to how they're managing what their trust model is, because I have that backing of the regulations,” she told the Sunday Telegraph.

GDPR, which came into force in May this year, requires that companies and public bodies who manage data must be transparent about what they are collecting and what they are using it for, and allows a “data subject” to revoke their consent for their data to be processed. 

“A citizen would report an infringement to their ICO who would pursue the investigation and deal with any infringement on their behalf,” added Dr Taylor.

An example could be where a visitor from an EU country downloads a smart city’s app ahead of visiting in order to access perks such as parking, free WiFi and information about local events. 

source: telegraph.co.uk - November 11th, 2018

Keiron Shepherd, Senior Security Specialist at F5 Networks, discusses how the threat landscape will change as smart cities become more of a reality and the security considerations we need to make before we begin reaping the benefits of connected devices

We are in an era of intelligent and urgent urban innovation. Our homes are connected, our streets are thriving labyrinths of interconnectivity, and our businesses are a hive of data streaming and surveillance.

Communities are now emerging as sophisticated centres of technical excellence, prompting micro and macro revolutions in virtually every aspect of our lives. Across the world, digital “smartness” is either being activated, enhanced, evangelised or considered a transformative option. Is this trend a good one?

As the popularity and inevitability of smart cities expand, so too does a cybercriminal’s opportunistic attack surface. Are we now putting the public’s data and infrastructure at an unprecedented risk? Are we the authors of a 21st century tale of two cities where one is hyperconnected and vulnerable and the other overly cautious and developmentally moribund? More importantly, what the Dickens can we do to get the balance right?

The race to evolve

Urban business-as-usual will not work. Population growth and dwindling resources are driving mass migrations to the worlds’ cities, and present infrastructures are incapable of pre-empting and adapting to the consequences – much less achieving optimal, equitable living environments in the long term.

One of the smart cities’ most compelling promises is the capacity to address traditional problems with data-driven incision, mining insights from countless sensors, interactions, and behaviours. There are numerous associated economic benefits to this technological shift. According to a recent whitepaper by ABI Research, worldwide smart city technologies could unlock more than $20 trillion in additional economic benefits in the next decade.

Europe has big ambitions to take advantage. 2017 European Parliament research claims that the region already has 240 cities at over 100K in a population with some smart city features in place (i.e. technology to improve energy use, transport systems or other infrastructure). By the end of 2019, the Smart Cities and Communities European Innovation Partnership predicts there will be 300 smart cities in play.

A future of symbiotically connected communities, services, and processes is undeniably an admirable vision. However, with all the pressures to move at pace, there are growing concerns that cybersecurity risks are inadequately anticipated or managed.

Unfortunately, many devices, systems, and technologies powering today’s smart city dream are still being developed without appropriate security architectures or threat mitigation solutions. This short-sightedness can cause a raft of vulnerabilities leading to serious issues threatening livelihoods and, in some cases, life itself. A hacker commandeering a smart parking meter may be a nuisance but a cybercriminal infiltrating a nuclear plant could cause cataclysmic repercussions.

Lessons learned

At this year’s Black Hat conference, IBM’s X-Force Red Team examined existing municipality technologies to determine the possibility of “supervillain” style attacks.

Researches focused on four common devices and found 17 vulnerabilities, of which nine were deemed critical. One European country was using a vulnerable device to detect radiation. In the US, it was a system monitoring traffic control. The vulnerabilities in question on both occasions were not complex — the vendors simply failed to implement basic security measures.

To spook us even more, IBM’s researchers went on to simulate an attack on devices that monitor water levels in dams. In less than a minute, they were able to flood surrounding areas. The simulated hack was on a commonly used piece of smart city tech and was easy to hijack causing widespread mayhem.

Architecting the future

The U.N. predicts that two-thirds of the world’s population will reside in densely packed megacities by 2030. This means a mass of technology coming online fast, especially with the advent of 5G, and this could potentially fuel boundless IoT fantasies and realities.

Business leaders, tech disruptors, developers, service providers, and planners need to ramp up collaboration with industry regulators and ecosystem partners urgently to ensure appropriate rollouts of secure, seamless networks and devices. The tech industry at large should also do more to ensure the principle of ‘security-by-design’ is embraced throughout the entire infrastructure development ecosystem. Furthermore, end-to-end security has to improve, including tighter authentication of users as well as enforced policies for all communication paths. At the same time, service providers have to enhance their privacy-focused data encryption capabilities with the latest advanced software.

In summary, we need governments, city planners, and business leaders to start heeding the warnings signs of growing cybercrime and include cybersecurity experts at all stages, from design and construction to infrastructural management and beyond. We all want smarter cities, but we need to get wiser at navigating the threat landscape to stay streets ahead of cybercriminals.

By Keiron Shepherd

Senior Security Specialist

F5 Networks

source: https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/smart-cities-is-it-wise-to-get-smarter/54041/ -  November 5th, 2018

Los Angeles’ open data platform, Virginia Beach’s flood defence work and Coral Gables’ utilisation of Lean Six Sigma processes are among the projects which have put the cities at the top of the 2018 Digital Cities Survey in the US.

The annual survey recognises cities that have leveraged data to enhance city services and to tackle social challenges, enhance cyber-security and improve transparency. It is in its 18^th year and is conducted by the Centre for Digital Government (CDG).

The survey acknowledges cities in five population classifications: 500,000 or more; 250,000 to 499,999; 125,000 to 249,999; 75,000 to 124,999 and fewer than 75,000.

Leading the nation

“This year’s Digital Cities Survey winners are leading the nation when it comes to leveraging data to improve a wide range of city services and initiatives,” said Teri Takai, executive director of the Centre for Digital Government. “Thanks to the efforts of these innovative cities, citizens now benefit from enhanced services as well as improved transparency and privacy protection efforts.”

This year’s first place category winners include:

• Los Angeles, California: provides a huge range of digital services to city residents. The city’s open data platform has 1,100 datasets, with 100 per cent of departments contributing. At the same time, excellent cyber-security strategies help protect citizen privacy. The city also leverages emerging tech such as chatbots, automated assistants and social media platforms to better assist citizens. The city’s ‘clean streets’ initiative, a programme of the collaborative comprehensive homeless strategy, is powered by data from the 311 call centre and mobile app, and responses are managed and services dispatched through the customer relationship management system.

• Virginia Beach, Virginia: integrated smart city priorities with its council ‘s 10 strategic goals, installed 12 Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to mitigate the impact of sea-level rise and flooding and to support disaster preparedness and recovery, and appointed a chief data officer who improved the open data and transparency site with meaningful data and visualisations.

• Bellevue, Washington: city is a founding member and provides leadership for the 30-organisation non-profit eCityGov and provides services such as recruiting, permitting and mapping; project management; help desk and application hosting services. Bellevue’s revised website and improved services resulted in a rating of good/excellent by 84 per cent of users.

• Westminster, Colorado: city completed more than 25 significant technology projects in the past 12 months, providing support for city council goals. The city also fully adopted the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cybersecurity framework, which demonstrates city leaders’ commitment to security.

• Coral Gables, Florida: exemplifies the data-driven characteristic of a digital city with its business intelligence portals and dashboards; transparency and open data portals; smart city projects with IoT sensors and platforms; and utilisation of Lean Six Sigma processes.

The top-10 ranked cities will be honoured at an awards dinner during the National League of Cities’ annual conference in Los Angeles, California, on 8 November 2018.

Big Data and Open Data help develop intermodality and adapt this one in real time, while creating new uses in terms of moves. Many cities offer public transport users several possibilities and favor intermodality. So in San Francisco navigation applications such as Google Maps calculate various multimodal routes by integrating transport and taxi on demand (Uber).

Grenoble transport service, meanwhile, takes into account more options. Users have at their disposal an application indicating which is the most relevant travel mode: tram, bus, walk or car sharing, depending on traffic.

Cities with mobility data can offer alternatives to their resident and understand what travel are the masterplans in terms of moves in order to optimize them.

Dublin, which does not have a metro, had to reduce its bus fleet. However this loss has been accompanied by a new network management tool based on Big Data. The management system created by IBM reduces their travel time by 10 to 15% by identifying in every route which recurring place are problematic in order to make the necessary adjustments. As part of the HubCab project MIT researchers analyzed 150 million courses. They concluded that the number of trips could be reduced by 40% if they were grouped because of all the people going to the same places at the same times.

Loaded with sensors, autonomous vehicles collect and receive phenomenal amounts of data. Nowadays, connected cars which are not yet autonomous process between 80 and 200 different information in real time, generating, according to experts, up to 1GB of data per second.

As autonomy’s development in transportations will increases, Big Data will occupy more and more a central place, multiplying in this way business opportunities, including for new actors. According to McKinsey, in 2030, the market for data collected by connected cars will reach 750 billion USD.

Many actors will intervene to record and analyze those data: passengers’ identities, taken routes, traffic status and information in order to understand and predict pedestrians, cyclists and other vehicles’ behaviors.

The sector has already launched its mutation which will be accelerated with the deployment of 5G. The digital’s actors are already positioning themselves. In this context, Valeo is became a partner of Apollo, the collaborative platform for the Baidu autonomous car - the Chinese Google. Here LLC, specializing in cartography and Fujitsu have partnered in order to offer complete solutions to car makers. Intel acquired Mobileye, the sensors and software manufacturer for autonomous cars. The car renter Lyft has teamed up with General Motors as well as Google with Fiat Chrysler and Uber with Volvo. The market is booming and everyone, from the start-up to the global company, can create brand new strategic alliances.

The Internet of Things (IoT) by allowing the sensors’ integration represents the backbone of cities that can become smart ones by multiplying sources of information.

 In 2017, already 11.2 billion objects such as infrastructures, roads, street lightings, electricity, water distribution networks or transports were connected ... from simple monitoring to predictive maintenance, scopes of application are numerous

 In cities-wide, those thousands of connected devices transmit small amounts of data through low-speed networks in order to limit energy consumption and costs. France has managed to emerge an alliance concerning the LoRaWan protocol with actors like Bouygues Telecom and Orange or quality players like Sigfox or Qowisio, who struggle each other to impose their standard. However this diversity complicates the implementation of a unique and secure model. 

 Indeed, IoTs are as many possible entry points. To control those flaws, operators must apprehend security on three levels: 

 -        Objects

-        Communication networks

-        The cloud where all data are send 

In addition, operators must be part of the security lifecycle's management. In fact new software deployments, migrations from one cloud to another one, device replacements, involve rigorous management of identities, tokens and keys.

From October 2018, France, with its law on the " Digital Republic ", requires from communities with more than 3500 inhabitants to "open their data by default". If in the wake of Paris, cities like Rennes, Bordeaux, Montpellier and Lyon have already developed this type of initiative since 2010, but they are still too few to do it

In addition, data must be understood in a more global context in order to develop smart city services. Every day, citizens, private companies and public actors generate Big Data which are collected by sensors, captured by computer or shared on social media.

Those raw data which comes from different origins must be routed and have to transit to processing platforms which generate new information - Smart Data - to feed innovative services. Thus, by placing themselves in a logic of harvesting Big Data and by joining forces with different partners, cities discover glimpses of new managing ways.

Power suppliers can, from energy data, detect housing to be renovated or those which are vacant. Telecom operators can determine the number of people in an area and all their moves, as much information useful for planning transports.

Lille has teamed up with Waze. In exchange for city data on events and public works, the collaborative GPS provides real-time traffic data, including accidents which are declared by users in an average time of 4 minutes 30 minutes before the emergency services are aware of them.

Smart technology cannot replace wise planning in building a city, Singapore's former master planner, Mr Liu Thai Ker has said.

Many young planners put blind faith in technology, thinking that knowledge of technology is enough to plan a city well, and this is the reason why urban environments do not do well, he said yesterday at a forum in Beijing.

Mr Liu was sharing his experience at the China-Singapore Executive Forum 2018, which discussed cooperation between the two countries in the building of smart cities and developing of the new economy.

While technology cannot replace planning, information technology can help the operation and efficiency of cities and buildings, he added. "If we understand this clearly, we will build a truly new type of smart city," he concluded in his keynote speech.

Noting that China is very strong in science and technology, while Singapore has a more mature approach in the use of technology in city planning and building design, Mr Liu said: "I look forward to Singapore and China learning from each other to create a more ideal world."

Mr Qiao Runling, deputy chairman and research fellow at the China Centre for Urban Development, said the biggest challenge is the lack of ability to integrate.

He said within the government, there is a lack of integration between policies, functions and data. Transport, for example, is managed separately from green development. Different departments are information silos and there are also great institutional barriers. "A truly smart city should have chemistry and three-dimensional integration, otherwise you cannot talk about becoming a smart city," he said.

Mr Shan Zhiguang, secretary-general of China Smarter City Development and Research Centre, noted that 10 years after the idea of building smart cities was mooted in 2008, China is still at a tentative stage.

This is because there is a lack of a core concept of what constitutes a smart city; a lack of effective design theories and methods; and a lack of mechanisms for the long-term sustainable operation of smart cities.

The absence of standardisation, cooperation and sharing of knowledge and data across government institutions and the private sector was also brought up in discussion on the development of the new economy in China.

Mr Jerry Chen, the founding director of Tencent's Healthcare Big Data Lab, noted that China has huge amounts of data but these data are not linked up and so their value is not fully utilised. "From the perspective of national policies and companies working with each other, there should be greater guidance so that there is a better way or mechanism to give full play to the value of data," he said.

The forum, organised by the Singapore Chamber of Commerce and Industry in China and Caixin Media, also saw three closed-door round-table discussions on cooperation in healthcare, infrastructure and technology.

Source: straitimes.com - September 13th, 2018 - Goh Sui Noi China Bureau Chief In Beijing

Mastercard, technology company in the global payments industry, continues to champion the fundamental role of smart cities in enabling a more connected and inclusive future for Africa. The company reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the development of smart cities through meaningful partnerships with both the public and private sector at the recent World Cities Summit in Singapore, where Mastercard was a patron sponsor.

Markets across the region are already heavily investing in the future of cities, with figures from the International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasting spend on technologies that enable smart city initiatives will reach $1.26 billion in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) in 2018. Commending the exceptional efforts of regional governments in implementing smart city initiatives and creating more opportunities for their cities’ transformation into vibrant hubs for innovation, Mastercard experts at the Summit shed light on the significance of a Public-Private-People (3P) model and data analytics as key enablers of the technologies that will open doors to the cities of the future.

“An inclusive future for all is a shared responsibility and we believe that effective collaborations hinged on a dynamic Public-Private-People model is the way forward if we want to unlock the full potential of our cities. Mastercard is focused on making cities more efficient and inclusive by enabling ecosystems that benefit residents, visitors and local businesses. The key to the success of these cities is partnerships, and we will continue to engage with governments, NGOs and leaders in innovation to enable a smarter and more connected future for all,” said Anton van der Merwe, Vice-President, Acceptance at Mastercard.

With two billion adults around the world still lacking access to financial services, Mastercard is helping advance inclusive communities worldwide through its collaborations. The company has partnered with over 60 governments globally to deliver more than 1,600 scalable programs in various cities and communities.

Edited by Fundisiwe Maseko on itnewsafrica.com - July 29th, 2018

In recent years, the concept of smart cities has gained popularity quickly. Many countries are transforming their cities and investing in making them ‘smarter’. However, the actual definition of smart cities is not very clear. Some focus on sustainable development, some on technological innovation and others on the people who live there and their experience. Key seems to be that smart cities are sustainable, driven by the needs of the people who live there. To realize this, technology seems to be indispensable.

Smart city race to the top

In the Netherlands, several cities are working on their smart transformation. Already back in 2009 Amsterdam launched a smart city platform, bundling innovative projects. For Amsterdam, realizing carbon neutrality is an important topic and they are working hard towards reaching this goal by 2040. This year, the roof of the Amsterdam Johan Cruyff Arena was covered in solar panels and the energy will be stored in batteries, which significantly contributes to Amsterdams’ ambitions. Together with top Dutch universities, the city is researching self-driving vehicles, mobility management and sustainable energy. The city even appointed a Chief Technology Officer to further their transformation.

The second fastest growing city in the Netherlands is Utrecht. Their smart city focus is mainly on health, under the umbrella of ‘healthy urban living’. Their aim is to keep the city livable, even with the fast growth. Besides the focus on health, Utrecht is also the city with the most smart grids and the home of solarcharging and the city is heavily investing in making the city smarter through data.

The ‘brains’ of Chinese cities

One thing is clear: there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to smart cities. Every city faces its own challenges and requires a different smart solution. This is also clear in the approach of the Chinese government in creating smart cities. In Beijing for instance, the focus is ‘smart economy’, while for Hangzhou the focus is on the ‘Internet of Things’ and Guangzhou is focusing on ‘intelligent traffic’. Also, completely new smart cities are being constructed, such as Xiong’an. This former village near Beijing is being completely transformed and made smart from the start.

At present, there are about 500 smart cities in China that are being piloted. The market size over 650 billion yuan, with which the Chinese are investing more than any other country in the world. The Chinese smart cities are mainly concentrated in the major economic regions Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta.

Combining smart city expertise

The Dutch approach to smart cities is very much a bottom-up approach. Local initiatives are piloted and together with citizens and companies cities work towards their smart ambitions. Meanwhile in China the approach is very much top down, and local governments are heavily investing and promoting a quick transformation. Both ways of working towards smart cities are very different but when combined may amplify each other.

Designing a truly smart city is about connecting all the pieces of a complicated puzzle. Together, countries can add their pieces to a global puzzle. For instance, while the Dutch have a lot of expertise in the field of smart water management and smart charging, China has a lot of expertise in the field of big data and high tech.

After all, the challenges to which smart cities may be the answer are global. How do we create attractive places to live? How do we make our cities future proof? How do we use big data but protect privacy? By combining expertise of different countries, the smart cities of the future might be closer than we think.

source: netherlandsandyou.nl  - July 30th, 2018