Information Privacy Concerns in a Participatory Crowdsourcing Smart City Project

Abstract

‘Smart Cities’ are an innovative approach that allows for current city infrastructure and resources to be used more efficiently. Large amounts of data must be collected for a smart city to be effective, but there are information security concerns that prevent citizens from participating in these projects. This paper investigates what factors need to be in place in order to mitigate the information security concerns of citizens participating in a public safety, participatory crowdsourcing smart city project. The study made use of a quantitative approach with a survey design. A questionnaire was completed by 361 participants of a public safety project hosted East London, South Africa. The results indicated that information security was a concern to the participants. The factors that were identified to mitigate the information security concerns included: legislation; the continuous availability of the crowdsourcing system; education to increase awareness about the information security controls in place and feedback mechanisms to provide evidence about how the reported information is being used to increase public safety in the city.