On the deployment of citizens' privacy preserving collective intelligent ebusiness models in smart cities

Abstract

During the last two decades the world is being transformed towards a virtual agglomerate of large interconnected cities. Moreover, an integration of digital infrastructures with the physical city infrastructure and facilities is taking place. This integration includes data generating sensors and various internet-connected devices which are dispersed in a city having as a target to offer a variety of services in order to ease citizens' daily lives. In this, so called, smart city digital ecosystem, companies provide eBusiness models that are based on Collective Intelligence based decision making applications focusing on discovering citizens' needs by collecting data related to their activities. However, the lack of privacy preserving mechanisms in such applications that eliminate the risk of correlation between citizens' activities and their identities discourages citizens from providing their data to commerce systems. In this paper, we first discuss a new privacy preserving authentication technology, the Privacy-ABCs, and its successful deployment in a course evaluation pilot in higher education as well as a social networking application for pupils in a school environment. Based on the wide acceptance of this technology by the pilot users, we propose the deployment of a Privacy-ABCs based authentication system in a generic Collective Intelligent eBusiness model in a Smart City. The incorporation of this authentication technology in Collective Intelligence based eServices, has the potential of establishing new market opportunities since citizens' anonymity will increase their incentives to provide valuable data related to their consuming activities and buying preferences as they move about in the city.