Data protection in smart cities: Application of the EU GDPR

Abstract

Urban growth, combined with the development of digital technology, has led to the recent boom of smart cities worldwide. Smart cities make use of all available information and communications technology in the built environment to control their operation and in this way to enhance the quality of life and to drive economic growth. This phenomenon also raises legal issues regarding data protection. The key questions that smart cities already face concern the rights and treatment of data. Currently, further to the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC, each Member State of the EU has in place its own legislation to govern data protection. This translates into a lack of harmonization within the European Union, which does not contribute towards uniting even more the various Member States. This is something that the introduction of the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR) on 25 May 2018 aims to change, as it shall be directly applicable as is and shall not require different legislation in each country, thus requiring all smart cities and related businesses throughout the EU to ensure their treatment of data complies with the same set of provisions. Therefore, since smart cities are the cities of the future and legal compliance shall be a cornerstone of their operation, the objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between smart cities and data protection under the emerging common EU legal framework and the effect it has upon them.