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Secure the Smart City Karatzogianni CREST February 2016.pdf
(2016)
Abstract
Between 5,000 and 6,000 Europeans have travelled to Syria to join the Islamic State (Vera
Jurova, EU Justice Commissioner, Le Figaro, 13 April 2015). France, the UK and Germany are
the biggest contributors. Most of these new adherents come from urban centers and their
use of networked everyday communications and online radicalization seem to be a
complementary, if not crucial, factor for their global jihadist crusade. Moreover, the attacks
on Paris in November 2015 showed how network(ed) terrorism, across several European
cities, could have a devastating impact on a highly digitalized hub, such as Paris. Closer to
home, it dramatically increased the uncertainties, which the intelligence, police and defense
sectors face in the UK, in preventing a terrorist attack after London 7/7. Yet, despite
innovative efforts to develop smarter cities and to catalyse a higher quality of life, both at
national and European levels, surprisingly little attention is paid to understanding the
development of balanced digital governance policies in the specific context of smart city
security.
There are now at least thirty cities with a population of over ten million people
(London ranks 24th at 14m). The networked city provides new opportunities for enhanced
security, but is also a troubling source of vulnerability. ‘Secure the Smart City’ focuses on
five cities plus one, five which have experienced terrorist attacks (London, Paris, New York,
Mumbai, Madrid, plus Barcelona exceptionally as a tech innovation hub), as case studies for
understanding the digital governance policies put in place after terrorist attacks and visions
for securing future cities. In a highly specialized and focused comparative historical multi-case
study, it examines how government actors, tech corporations, and civil society actors
perceive the security of a ‘smart city’, as both a governance tool, but also a system of people
interacting with virtual platforms across industries, materials, energy, and logistical
infrastructures.
Accordingly, the project brings together three sets of academic literature. First, the
scholarship on what constitutes a smart city and the critical approaches to the exploitation
of big data by corporations in direct relation to cybersecurity issues. Second, it engages with
scholarship on how to balance freedom and security in the smart city, particularly in relation
to mitigating the risk of violent militant attacks. Third, the project investigates the impact of
smart city technologies in enabling the rapid acceleration of new sociopolitical formations,
paying specific attention to terrorist groups and militant organizations. The design of the
project allows it to map innovations in the areas of ideology, organisation, mobilisation, and
recruitment of non-state actors who target civilian populations, while at the same time
tracking the responses to their innovations in network(ed) terrorism by governmental and
corporate actors in five cities, which have been under attack.
Design and method involves firstly, a review of the state-of the-art in three sets of
literatures (smart city, digital governance, and ICTs use by terrorist actors) and results in a
synthetic framework for smart cities under attack and prevention regimes to inform
academics and practitioners. Secondly, semi-structured targeted interviews with government
officials, security professionals, smart city developers, as well as cybersecurity researchers
and civil society organizations constitute a key approach to data collection to establish their
attitudes toward security in their city, and the policy they advocate and plan for in their own
organizations to mitigate and counter terrorist threats. Thirdly, the digital network mapping
of key terrorist actors (i.e. Islamic State) investigates how they operate in smart city
theatres; how cultural, religious and other differences are negotiated in increasingly
cosmpolitanised virtual platforms to coopt and radicalize; and how transnational terrorist
networks are unwittingly accelerated by smart cities and the new sharing economy.
Therefore, this multi-case historical-comparative study seeks to provide:
1. A new framework for understanding, mitigating and countering threats in smart
cities;
2. An examination of the trajectory of terrorist groups in the five cities both by analyzing
their communication material and mapping their digital networks;
3. A review of lessons learned and matrix of policy recommendations to enhance the
UK’s capacity to detect and mitigate such threats.
Disciplines
Publication Date
2016
Citation Information
Karatzogianni, A. (5 February 2016) Funding proposal application to ESRC CREST Call. (Draft) https://crestresearch.ac.uk/news/commissioning-programme-broad-topic-solicitation/
Creative Commons license
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC_BY-SA International License.