Axis Communications’ Steven Kenny reviews the challenges facing smart city planners and technology vendors, and the importance of citizen buy-in to smart city initiatives.


Over four billion people live in urban areas today. The UN forecasts that this number will rise to two thirds of the world population by 2050. City living’s dominance is rising in sync with the growth of ubiquitous technology, with the smart city emerging as the inevitable result. From a statistical viewpoint, this is an absolute positive. Research shows that smart city construction has a significant impact on public occupational health, that smart cities are more energy efficient, and that aligning a city’s interconnected systems contributes both directly and indirectly to its economic, social, and environmental stability.

While there is no formalised definition of a smart city, every effort from Seoul to Dubai to Copenhagen shares a similar goal. A smart city is one which can adapt to its citizens’ needs and actions quickly. By harnessing the combined power of high-speed communication and properly analysed big data, cities can positively alter infrastructure and provide clear public information. But the smart-city model can only be successful when everyone is focused on the same goals and objectives. This can be difficult when it comes to seeking citizen acceptance, and trust.

Barriers to smart city adoption

Understandingly perhaps, big data can be a sticking point for citizens. Devices must be connected to every core city function for a smart city to be able to coordinate its actions. Yet, the level of widespread surveillance required to make a city smart is not necessarily popular, particularly if those affected are not properly assured that such technology is being used ethically.

Poverty and social exclusion may make certain factions less likely to join or, indeed, understand smart city incentives. Bad actors may cause issues through their inclination to act against smart city projects, either in the pursuit of data or disruption. And smart cities are incredibly complex. Convincing citizens to trust that public servants will install and operate the technology of a smart city properly could be the biggest barrier of all.

Trust issues go both ways. At least as of now, the world’s governments have been relatively accommodating to the extended needs of smart city infrastructure. GDPR, for example, was specifically formulated to cover the data from consumer-grade Internet of Things devices, allowing for greater flexibility for building and city automation using commercial IoT tech. However, the EU has suggested that further guidance is likely to follow in due course, and there is every chance that worldwide smart cities may be forced to pivot or, at least, alter their digital infrastructure to adhere to new local data protection rules in the future.

Building citizen engagement and trust

Whatever technology is added to a city, its key asset is and always will be its populace. But citizen buy-in is by no means a given. 2019 research by the Internet Society suggests 63% of people find the way connected devices collect data about people and their behaviours ‘creepy’; these same people must be convinced of the benefits and assured of the safety of a smart city. This is a process which involves service providers doing everything in their power to create an environment of inherent trust, strong privacy, and ethical behaviour by default.

Limiting the scope of data sharing to authorities that may need it – and destroying that data when it is no longer relevant – is merely step one. To engender trust in a smart city, its data must never be collected or stored without good reason, and connections between data collected and personal identity made only when necessary. For example, while ANPR cameras covering bus lanes must deal with identifiable data, there is no need for number plate data to be included in any broad traffic management systems. Building systems now based on this philosophy not only helps improve citizen trust, but it also theoretically makes the transition to potential new privacy rules easier.

Trust in vendors and hardware

Trust must be earned not only by those constructing the broad systems that unite a smart city but by those that provide the individual elements of a smart city’s infrastructure. Vendors have a double duty in that they must equally work to reassure citizens as well as local governments. Both entities need to know that their privacy concerns are being met, and smart city constructors require secure hardware that will last both in a physical and logical sense.

Smart cities demand hardware which offers long-term support and reliable firmware, released on a schedule which causes minimum disruption; a vendor forcing an early upgrade path on the hardware of a new smart city is likely to cause significant disruption and enmity. Smart cities also need access to relevant data points which might extend beyond that hardware’s usual capabilities, like security cameras which can use AI to provide information on crowd behaviour or traffic density. If one piece of hardware can do the job of several, complexity, cost and management overhead is significantly reduced.

And vitally, smart cities need data to be presented in a clear, consistent and secure form which can integrate into its already incredibly complex infrastructure with the minimum of effort – and adapt, if rules or demands change, to satisfy the ongoing needs of a growing populace.

A smarter, safer future


Ethics, privacy, and trust must be the core tenets of any smart city project. These are the convincers that will bring citizens on board. Once the infrastructure is in place and the benefits of smart cities truly come to light, people may wonder how they ever managed without access to live data, without cleaner air and clearer streets, without the predictive models which offer them access to everything they need.

Smart cities are not an experiment. They are a growing model for the future of urban living. Done right, a smart city can thrive – but the balance of happiness is easily tipped, and every one of a smart city’s countless elements has the potential to disturb this equilibrium. Providing assurances around trust, ethics and privacy in relation to the use of data to improve the operations of the city, and the lives of its citizens, should be very much at the top of the smart city agenda.