A framework for assessing cyber security and privacy threats and investigating their impact on smart city performance

Today, the world is experiencing the evolution of smart cities. The emergence of such cities stems from the application of information technology innovation, which, despite the creation of numerous economic and social opportunities, has posed citizens with cyber security and privacy threats. The successful transition of cities to smart cities and the optimal performance of smart cities depends on the awareness of these threats and their effectiveness. This study aims to provide a framework for identifying and evaluating cyber security and privacy threats and examining their impact on smart city performance in city. This research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive survey in terms of the data collection method. In this study, these threats have been identified through in-depth library studies as well as surveys through researcher-made questionnaires using fuzzy Delphi method from academic experts and relevant officials that were selected by purposeful manner and the importance of each threat has been determined using the fuzzy Best-Worst Multi-Criteria method. Then, according to the smart city concepts and theories, the performance of city in the transition to a smart city is described based on five components as smart infrastructure, governance, economy, people, and environment. After that, the hypotheses, described on the impact of these threats on the performance of smart city, have been tested using the Structural Equations Modeling based on Partial Least Squares method. The findings indicated that 11 cyber security threats and 10 privacy challenges existed in the smart city, among which three threats as Legislative challenge, Lack of secure communication, and Insecure APIs and protocols were specified as the key threats. Furthermore, analyzing the fitted model and research hypotheses showed a negative and significant relationship between the variables of cyber security threats and privacy challenges with the smart city performance and a positive and significant relationship between cyber security threats and privacy challenges at a 95% confidence level. Considering the value of the R2 coefficient, it was observed that the variables of cyber security threats and privacy challenges in total, predicted 72.7% of the changes related to the performance variable of smart city, which was remarkable.