Smart Cities: Opportunities, Challenges, and Security Threats

Abstract

Smart cities represent a lifestyle totally based on making use of such unprecedented technological developments as Artificial Intelligence systems, the internet of things and big data, with the aim of maximizing the use of the available resources, reducing energy consumption and waste, creating an environment that enhances creation and innovation, and improving the quality of life for people by reducing the cost of living and making life easier and safer.

Smart cities have become a priority in developments strategies of many countries all over the world. This is simply because they are among the main incentives to development, as they stimulate economic growth and accommodate population growth. It is estimated that in 2025 around 10 million people will be living in 34 smart cities all over the world (Smart Cities in USA",2018), and that almost 70% of the world population will be living in such cities in 2050(Building the Future's Smart Cities, 2016)..

In spite of their various advantages smart cities have many national and cyber security concerns. Houses, infrastructure, transportation, communication, government services, as well as commercial and industrial services, etc. are controlled by smart systems dependent upon artificial intelligence and the internet of things. If these services are targeted by a successful cyber-attack, the consequences in that case would be unaffordable to national security and people lives.

So, this paper is seeking to discuss the impotence to have smart cities for development and its consequences to national security.