The cognitive city, a new approach that helps enhance urban areas with learning and behavioral modification capacities, is increasing as a possible answer to the issues that future significant towns will face. In this scenario, data privacy and security have become important challenges that cities must tackle to ensure the effective implementation of cognitive cities and the protection of people’s basic rights. Therefore, this article will discover how and what private and security factors should be applied in cognitive towns.
What exactly are cognitive cities?
Behavioral study methods and artificial learning depend on the utilization of everyday human cognition that is used to build cognitive cities. As a result, cognitive cities rely on individuals providing their daily-life data, including sensitive private information.
Cognitive cities can sense, interpret, and react to changes in their surroundings by learning and adapting their behavior based on previous experiences. This flow of data constitutes an intelligence enhancement cycle, allowing the city to benefit from the active cooperation of individuals and adjust as the change occurs, resulting in sustainability and durability.
Privacy and security related to cognitive cities
Considering that people’s data is the primary source of information used to make cognitive city choices and that these decisions impact citizens’ daily lives, preserving this data is critical, not only on an interpersonal basis but also on a community scale.
To begin with, the omnipresent gathering of citizen-related data at the city level poses significant privacy risks, such as private information revelation, ownership, or marginalization. As a result, data will have to be anonymized. There is still a possibility of re-identification of people in consolidated data sets. As a result, statistical exposure control procedures should be used before any information is released.
Moreover, the wide range of city-wide data sources such as transportation, health, power, security cameras, and so on) combined with the explanatory abilities of cognitive and AI systems expands our understanding of inhabitants’ everyday activities. This enables for more significant in-depth profiling and modeling of residents’ behavior.
How can the rise of cognitive cities harm the privacy of an individual?
Because cognitive cities will become part of the environment for human-cognitive connectivity, inadequacies or glitches in this sense can halt city actions, having a significant effect on citizens’ lives. When these failures occur on purpose systems, such as healthcare, the consequences can be severe in confidence, financial loss, injury to persons, and human casualties.
Furthermore, cognitive city networks will need to be ready to combat rejection, malware, and other disrupting attacks and adopt comprehensive security protection mechanisms, rather than simply defending the city from occasional failures and malfunctions.
Final views
Despite the apparent advantages, individuals may experience a breach of privacy and a loss of liberty. Furthermore, the social implications could be far more significant, opening it up to dangers such as extreme surveillance, power imbalances, and exploitation in favor of governments, companies, or whoever controls city information.