Taking a resilient approach to smart cities

Building in protection from online attacks becomes vital as technology designed to create resilient and sustainable smart cities could create a playground for digital criminals, writes the BSI

Smart cities are built on a foundation of technology – deploying AI, big data, augmented reality, the Internet of Things (IoT) and BIM (Building Information Modelling) – to create well-designed urban centres that work for domestic and business inhabitants alike. Ironically, the technology at their heart could create vulnerability to cyber attack.

Accelerating investment in smart cities, with their hyperconnected technology, comes in response to a major global population shift towards living in metropolitan areas. This demographic evolution is prompting governments to seek ways to capitalise on the rapidly evolving technological landscape and improve the ways these cities work.

Sustainability and resilience are key considerations for authorities running smart cities as the automation they rely on is enabled through IoT connected devices alongside the use of BIM, creating a digital ‘engine room’ of information that is essential for the cities’ day-to-day operating systems. As smart cities are established on a worldwide scale, governments and developers will need to ensure information is protected and cyber criminals are thwarted so that information, technologies and platforms are safeguarded.

The volume of information created in the day-to-day running of smart cities is a tempting prospect for cyber criminals. Powered by rapidly developing new technologies and capabilities, smart cities deploy 5G networks alongside multiple public and private cloud services to automate society, from city traffic flows to emergency services and across every possible industry through IoT.

For organisations running smart cities to be trusted by their stakeholders, they must be vigilant with their digital operations, creating trust in cyber security and data privacy safeguards and guarding against hacking or denial-of-service attacks.

This is where BSI’s industry-leading experts in cyber security and the built environment can support organisations. Our cyber security specialists create a digitally reinforced world for clients, supporting their teams to embrace digital technology and giving them the right knowledge and skills to safeguard the technological foundations of smart cities.

This can be achieved by identifying, detecting and protecting against and responding to, daily data threats and risks that can directly affect operations and financial stability.

Smart cities demand smart thinking
BSI’s focus is to create a digitally trusted world for our customers, protecting information and people to ensure they are cyber-safe and resilient in today’s fast-paced society.

All stages of the smart city development life cycle can benefit from cyber security support: design, construction, manufacturing, facility operation or decommissioning.

Events and activities where information are shared across networks requires the need to establish continuous identify authentication, which is one of the many ways in which BSI protects its clients. Outdated firmware with weak identity protocols or passwords is just one scenario that offers an opportunity for information to be compromised.

Smart and the city – BSI’s pioneering UK role
Britain has had smart cities ambitions since 2014, when the UK Government first began to explore their potential. It quickly became clear that the sheer complexity of technology interfaces would require a clear framework for guidance.

The then Department for Business Innovation and Skills (now BEIS – Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) turned to BSI to produce the first smart city standard. Since then, a portfolio of standards has emerged to guide innovators through the digital concrete jungle.

These standards – which originated as Publicly Available Specifications (PASs) resulting from BSI’s expert consulting work – have gone on to provide feeder documents for international standards. PAS 181 (Smart City Framework), published in 2014, forms the basis of the international standard ISO 37106.

Dan Rossiter, Built Environment Sector Lead at BSI, says: “The number of standards produced shows the value of standardisation within a very complex area. The amount of information being shared, and the number of actors potentially involved, makes it necessarily complex. The UK has been in the vanguard of smart city thinking, especially ways of applying digital innovation. We have a very good track record of not just innovation but documenting procedures in our standards in such a way to make them easy to use.”

While more and more cities around the world – from Barcelona in Spain to Hangzhou in China – are creating smart city strategies, the UK has been an enthusiastic adopter with Peterborough, Bristol, Greenwich, Exeter, Oxford, Cambridge, Leeds and Milton Keynes all exploring how to integrate physical, digital and human elements effectively.

Navigating smart cities with BSI as your trusted advisor
Smart cities are complex technological eco-systems with their smooth-running dependent on tracking interfaces between the different systems. Standards can help by defining terminology, so there is a common understanding between the different stakeholders involved.

Conventional manufacturing standards involve manufacturers, customers and suppliers. With a smart city there are myriad relationships beyond the traditional: citizens, local authorities, urban planners, financial planners, utilities, traffic control and more.

As huge, interconnected organisms, smart cities create enormous amounts of data with the risk of error around wrong or incomplete data. Standards play a critical role in helping people to identify the data they need and how to structure it as information. Data inevitably raises the pressing need for data security – BSI’s PAS 185 standard provides guidance on that front.

BSI offers extensive expertise in IoT infrastructure and connected assets to ensure they are secure and benefit from information resilience. Our consultancy team has years of relevant industry and sector experience to offer insights and an end-to-end integrated cyber security approach. Our five-stage strategy steps clients through: identify, detect, protect, respond and recover to assess, analyse, develop, implement and manage cyber risks.

Standards development and consultancy are just two ways in which BSI is supporting the cyber safety of smart cities. We are also experts in security awareness and training, helping to raise awareness and upskill teams to handle a cyber attack or hacking event.

We are well placed to support certification to ISO 37106 – the international standard for sustainable cities and communities. Meanwhile, our complementary Kitemark™ certification (based on ISO 37106) enables policymakers, municipal authorities and other stakeholders to focus on their strategic priorities while providing a process for continuous improvement through regular audits.

BIM – cornerstone of the smart city
Building Information Modelling (BIM) standards have been fundamental to creating a platform for the digitalisation that is essential for smart cities to operate.

Dan Rossiter says: “BIM and information management have always been an element of smart cities because both are based on open, shareable data. BIM relies on having this data structured as information to support decision-making related to assets. It is this structure that creates the building blocks for the smart city to achieve the advantages presented by digitalisation.”

BIM processes around information management can enable an asset to be built in the most efficient, low carbon way. For instance, by utilising the information provided to reduce the amount of concrete required for a project. However, the real value of BIM comes after the build has been completed, because an asset designed using BIM can minimise the use of resources such as energy and water and can provide the information about the asset essential to the operation of a smart city.

The UK has led the way in BIM standards with the 1192 series (published from 2013). These progressed to become the ISO 19560 series, with additional parts still under development. The fundamental concepts established in the PASs have carried through to the ISOs for adoption internationally, underlining the good foundations laid by the UK within these PASs.

Although the principles of information management using BIM pre-date the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the relationship between them is clear. Depending on how the information intended to be used, information management using BIM can support four of the UN SDGs: industry innovation and infrastructure (9), sustainable cities and communities (11), responsible production and consumption (12) and climate action (13).