Ethical Analyses of Smart City Applications

Urban Science

Polka, Alex¹  Clever, Sawyer²  Crago, Tyler³ 

[1]Author to whom correspondence should be addressed

[2]Department of Engineering, Robert Morris University, Moon Township, PA 15108, USA

[3]Middleware Technologies Lab., Pittsburgh, PA 15057, USA

关键词: smart cities;    ethics;    data privacy;    Internet of Things;    smart city applications;   

DOI  :  10.3390/urbansci2040096

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

When it comes to smart cities, one of the most important components is data. To enable smart city applications, data needs to be collected, stored, and processed to accomplish intelligent tasks. In this paper we discuss smart cities and the use of new and existing technologies to improve multiple aspects of these cities. There are also social and environmental aspects that have become important in smart cities that create concerns regarding ethics and ethical conduct. Thus we discuss various issues relating to the appropriate and ethical use of smart city applications and their data. Many smart city projects are being implemented and here we showcase several examples to provide context for our ethical analysis. Law enforcement, structure efficiency, utility efficiency, and traffic flow control applications are some areas that could have the most gains in smart cities; yet, they are the most pervasive as the applications performing these activities must collect and process the most private data about the citizens. The secure and ethical use of this data must be a top priority within every project. The paper also provides a list of challenges for smart city applications pertaining in some ways to ethics. These challenges are drawn from the studied examples of smart city projects to bring attention to ethical issues and raise awareness of the need to address and regulate such use of data.

【 授权许可】

CC BY