Information Security in a Public Safety, Participatory Crowdsourcing Smart City Project

'Smart Cities' are a new and innovative approach that has been formulated during the past few years in order to use current infrastructure and resources more efficiently. Crowdsourcing is often used to collect data in a smart city, and citizens must consider the information security controls that are in such a system before participating. 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. A questionnaire was completed by 361 participants of a public safety project hosted East London, South Africa. The results indicated that the information security of the system (confidentiality, integrity and availability) was a concern to the citizens participating in the project. The factors that were identified as important to mitigate the information security concerns of citizens participating in a public safety, participatory crowdsourcing smart city project included: both legislation and technology is needed to protect the confidentiality of citizens; the continuous availability of the crowdsourcing system in order to be considered useful; education to increase awareness about the information security controls in place to protect the integrity of the information and feedback mechanisms to provide evidence to citizens about how the information is being used to increase public safety in their city.