Data governance in smart cities: Challenges and solution directions

Abstract

Today, our environment and the objects therein are equipped with an increasing number of devices such as cameras, sensors, and actuators, which all together produce a huge amount of data. Furthermore, we observe that citizens generate data via social media applications running on their personal devices. Smart cities and societies are seeking for ways to exploit these vast amounts of data. In this paper, we argue that to take full advantage of these data, it is necessary to set up data governance properly, which includes defining, assigning, and allocating responsibilities. A proper setting up of data governance appears to be a challenging task since the data may be used irresponsibly, thoughtlessly and maliciously, resulting in many (un)wanted side effects such as violation of rules and regulations, human rights, ethical principles as well as privacy and security requirements. We elaborate on the key functionalities that should be included in the governance of a data ecosystem within smart cites, namely provisioning the required data quality and establishing trust, as well as a few organizational aspects that are necessary to support such a data governance. Realizing these data governance functionalities, among others, asks for making trade-offs among contending values. We provide a few solution directions for realizing these data governance functionalities and making trade-offs among them.

Data driven approaches for smart city planning and design: a case scenario on urban data management

“…Similarly, integrity guarantees that message contents are not altered even if the message is accessed by an unauthorized user. Finally, availability confirms that data should be accessible to authorized user 24/7 (Verma et al, 2019;Choenni et al, 2022). Based on these arguments, the following proposition is made:…”

“…Data governance refers the exercise of authority and control, planning, enforcement and monitoring over the management of data assets. It aims at specifying the business terms, administrative structures, data owners, processes, metrics, policies and rules for the whole data lifecycle which comprises data collection, storage, usage, security, archiving and removal (Choenni et al, 2022). Hence, data governance relates to who holds the decision rights relating to data source and who is responsible for decision-making regarding data access and usage (Saxena, 2017).…”

“…Data security aims at protecting data assets, whether in transmission, processing or storage (Choenni et al, 2022). Nevertheless, threats to data integrity might affect municipality's goal of being smart.…”

“…City data should be protected to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, authenticity and availability (AlDairi, 2017). Confidentiality requires that only the sending entity and the intended receiving entity should be able to gain access to the contents of the message (Berkel et al, 2018;Choenni et al, 2022), whereas authenticity aids to set up the confirmation of identities ensuring that the source of the message is properly identified (Santana et al, 2018). Similarly, integrity guarantees that message contents are not altered even if the message is accessed by an unauthorized user.…”

Data impressions for a smart city: Exploring new ways to present and engage citizens in environmental data

“…This will be to fully understand how people of Cardiff are actually experiencing the data impressions and if they are feeling more engaged with the sustainability and biodiversity narrative of Flat Holm island. Choenni et al [7] note smart cities and societies are needing to seek ways to exploit vast amounts of data. We are hoping that approaches like the data impression could provide valuable ways to engage the data fatigued citizens into wanting to play their part.…”