=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2797/paper16
|storemode=property
|title=The Impact of Smart City Initiatives on Human Rights
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2797/paper16.pdf
|volume=Vol-2797
|authors=Leif Skiftenes Flak,Sara Hofmann
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/egov/FlakH20
}}
==The Impact of Smart City Initiatives on Human Rights==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2797/paper16.pdf
The Impact of Smart City Initiatives on Human
Rights
Leif Skiftenes Flak*, Sara Hofmann**
*University of Agder, leif.flak@uia.no
**University of Agder, sara.hofmann@uia.no
Abstract: A smart city is a phenomenon where municipalities engage with stakeholders to use ICT
for increasing efficiency, sustainability, and quality of life for its citizens and city operations.
However, smart city initiatives can at times challenge human rights. While particular human
rights such as privacy have been subject to analysis in the digital government field, a complete
view on human rights in smart cities has so far been missing in our discipline. It is mainly studies
from other disciplines that voice comprehensive concerns about potentially negative impacts of
smart cities on human rights. However, they often lack the technological background. This paper
reports on a pilot study as an initial exploration of the phenomenon in the digital government
field. In our research, we studied both the positive and negative effects of smart cities on human
rights by conducting qualitative interviews with citizens and municipal employees with central
roles in smart city initiatives. Our results suggest that in addition to privacy and security, the
human rights of freedom of expression, adequate standard of living, and equal access to public
services are likely to be affected by smart city initiatives.
Keywords: smart city, human rights, qualitative research, interviews, Norway
Acknowledgement: We would like to thank June Lithell Hansen and Andreas Skaiaa for the data
collection.
1. Introduction
Smart city is a concept that relates to addressing urgent urban problems by using new technologies.
Around 5 billion people are estimated to live in urban areas by the year 2030 (Nam & Pardo, 2011).
This is expected to introduce challenges concerning the inhabitants' wellbeing and quality of life,
especially regarding demographic shifts, gentrification, mobility, environmental impact, health care
support, security, safety and sustainability in housing, food and water supplies (Oliveira &
Campolargo, 2015). A smart city generally uses information and communication technologies (ICT)
life, better utilizing common resources, increasing cities' productivity and reducing climate and
environmental issues (Kommunal- og moderniseringsdepartementet, 2019). The underlying
technology of a smart city heavily relies on the active use of Internet of Things (IoT) and Big data.
Copyright ©2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
166 Ongoing Research
es it possible to gather data from
sensors, software and other electronics (Plachkinova, Vo, & Alluhaidan, 2016).
However, the quest for the mentioned benefits can also lead to potential negative effects of smart
cities and threaten human rights. Human rights represent rights that are "inherent to all human
beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status" (United
Nations, n.d.) such as the right to life and liberty, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to
work and education, and the right to privacy. For example, some of the data gathered in a smart city
context consist of sensitive and personal information such as current location information, habits
and personal preferences. This allows the owner of the data to create rich and in part personally
identifiable knowledge about consumers, patients, clients, customers and products (Hoffman, 2018).
In addition, public services in smart cities move online and replace their traditional counterpart.
This will require citizens to have the necessary knowledge needed to utilize these services. However,
if they do not, citizens may feel left out of society due to their inability to adopt. As a consequence,
smart city initiatives have been criticized for their lack of focus on citizens and for their top-down,
industry-driven decision mechanisms (Cardullo & Kitchin, 2019; Marsal-Llacuna, 2017).
While particular human rights such as privacy have been subject to analysis in the digital
government field, a complete view on human rights in smart cities has so far been missing in our
discipline. It is mainly studies from disciplines such as political science, urban development, and
sociology that voice comprehensive concerns about potentially negative impacts of smart cities on
human rights (see e.g. Herscovici, 2018; Reuter, 2019). However, they often lack the technological
background. We believe that the digital government field can add value to this debate as it integrates
both the social and the technological perspective.
Therefore, our aim in this study is to explore if, or how, smart city initiatives can impact the
human rights of the citizens that live in a smart city. This work in progress paper summarizes the
results of a pre-study that was guided by the research question: How can smart city initiatives affect
human rights?
In order to get an initial understanding of the phenomenon, we conducted qualitative interviews
with four experts working on smart city initiatives as well as ten citizens in a Norwegian city. Our
results suggest that smart city initiatives can have a significant impact - both positively and
negatively - on human rights. These findings will serve as the basis for a more in-depth analysis of
this relationship. Further, our findings can serve to sensitize scholars from both the digital
government and the information systems disciplines in their further endeavors.
2. Theoretical Background
2.1. Smart Cities
The smart city phenomenon emerged in the late 1990s and has gained substantial attention after the
turn of the century both among practitioners and researcher (Anthopoulos, 2017; Vanolo, 2014). The
key motivation behind the focus on smart cities is addressing challenges related to the increasing
urbanization worldwide. Already in 2008, 3.3 billion people lived in urban areas and it is estimated
Ongoing Research 167
that by 2030 the number will reach 5 billion (Nam & Pardo, 2011). The increase in population density
is expected to challenge life quality in the urban areas in a number of ways, including energy
consumption, transportation, pollution levels, waste management, public service provision and
participation in democratic processes (see e.g. Hashem et al., 2016; Lombardi, Giordano, Farouh, &
Yousef, 2012).
a status as an attractive area to live, work and study (Canonico, Consiglio, Iacono, Mercurio, & Berni,
2015). The conceptual framework by Nam & Pardo (2011) (see Figure 8) suggests that smart city
development can be viewed as the interplay between technology factors, institutional factors, and
human factors.
Although several technologies are necessary in smart city development, it is generally agreed that
smart city development is highly data driven. Phenomena like IoT (Internet of Things), Big data and
Data analytics are often seen as key technological enablers of development (Hashem et al., 2016). IoT
refers to the increasing number of Internet connected sensors that can be used for various
measurements, e.g. energy consumption, traffic, maintenance needs, personal health monitoring
and so on. Sensors need to be connected to the Internet to be useful. Connectivity indicates that
networks and infrastructure are important factors in smart city development. Connected sensors
generate huge amounts of data
data analytics i.e. computerized analysis of large amounts of data. Data analytics are
predominantly used for predictions but also as a basis for automation in several areas as suggested
by Hashem et al. (2016).
Figure 8: Foundational Components of A Smart City (Nam & Pardo, 2011)
Both practical development of smart cities and most of the research literature in the Information
Systems domain seem to assume a techno-optimist stance, meaning that smart city development is
considered more or less exclusively positive. Definitions and conceptualization such as the model
168 Ongoing Research
as infrastructure and services become increasingly data driven, the potential for harmful
consequences such as negative influence on human rights increase.
2.2. Human Rights and Smart Cities
Human rights refer to univeral and inalienable rights of every human being. They have been
institutionalised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General
Assembly after the second world war in 1948 (United Nations, n.d.). Todate, almost 150 countries in
the world have acknowledge the declaration.
Human rights have played a special role in urban areas beyond the realm of the smart city context.
This becomes manifest in the two narratives that particularly link the concepts of human rights and
cities: the rights in the city and the right to the city (Reuter, 2019). Both positions ground their
eligibility in the perception that a city belongs to all citizens that inhabit an urban space. While the
rights in the city refer to the implementation of the universally acknowledged human rights within
a city, the right to the city encompasses the idea that all citizens should be able to take advantage of
the city life and to contribute to it. Several national and international charters such as the European
Charter for the Safeguarding of Human Rights in the City (UCLG, 2012) and Global Charter-Agenda
for Human Rights in the City (UCLG, 2016) have taken up these ideas and especially focus on human
rights in urban areas (Marsal-Llacuna, 2017).
With the ubiquitous implementation of ICT in smart cities, new opportunities to enhance human
rights arise. Technology such as mobile applications could, for example, facilitate the inclusion of
marginalized groups such as disabled people (Reuter, 2019) and thus contribute to the "right to a
standard of living adequate for the health and well-being" (United Nations, n.d., Art. 25). Another
example is the use of data mining and analysis in schools that can contribute to more effective
teaching. This 'smart education' can help to enhance the right to education (Gomede, Gaffo, Briganó,
de Barros, & Mendes, 2018).
However, the increased use of ICT brings several threats to human rights. As seen from a
technical perspective, the individual's right to privacy is severely affected. IoT applications
massively collect data such as the identity of the user, position or personal communication, which -
if being transferred without consensus - violate the human right of privacy (Berrehili & Belmekki,
2017). It is further criticized that rather than including marginalized groups of people such as
disabled or elderly citizens, technological solutions even further exclude these stakeholders, thus
depriving them of their right to the city. To take advantage of smart city services, citizens need to
adapt to the technological procedures but not everyone is able to do so. In the research domains of
human rights, urban planning, politics, and sociology, smart cities are recurrently criticized for
prioritizing the needs of wealthy and well-educated citizens while neglecting the less privileged
ones (Reuter, 2019).
Rather than grounding on political, social and civil rights and the common good, smart city
solutions are criticized for being most often market-led (Cardullo & Kitchin, 2019). Another driver
are cities and governments aiming to use the label of a themselves
and display their modernity (Herscovici, 2018). Although proclaiming that they will increase the life
Ongoing Research 169
of their inhabitants, smart city initiatives are said to neglect a human-centric approach and ignore
the citizens' needs and wishes (Marsal-Llacuna, 2017). Rather than being able to actively take part in
smart urban development, citizens are often left with the role of passive consumers and data
providers (Reuter, 2019) and are sometimes even perceived as an obstacle to the smart city vision
and need to be forced into doing what is good for them (Herscovici, 2018).
From a digital government and information systems perspective, the tensions between human
rights and the opportunities offered by technology in smart cities has not been discussed
comprehensively. Therefore, the goal of our research is to move beyond the techno-optimist stance
and to shed light on the relationship between smart city initiatives and human rights also in our
discipline.
3. Research Approach
This study is considered a pilot to explore if, and eventually how, smart city initiatives can influence
human rights. Given the exploratory nature of the research, we adopted a qualitative research
approach (Walsham, 1995). Both researchers are interpretivists, curious to study emerging
phenomena in their natural context and understand how smart city initiatives are perceived by
different stakeholders. To this end, we adopted a qualitative case study design in the city of
Kristiansand, Norway. Norway is considered a suitable context to study smart cities and human
rights as it is among the most digitalized countries in the world and since it is a high-trust society
where human rights are highly valued. Kristiansand was selected as case as the city is in the process
of experimenting with a number of smart city initiatives. We used a snowballing approach to
selecting respondents, starting with the person responsible for smart city initiatives in Kristiansand.
This person pointed us to 3 more respondents, working with smart city initiatives. Additionally, we
interviewed 10 citizens representing variation in age, gender, profession and cultural background.
The duration of the interviews varied but typically lasted around 40 minutes. All interviews were
recorded and partially transcribed. The data were then analyzed using EnVivo software. In addition
to the interview data, we collected written material from Kristiansand describing their smart city
initiatives. The document analysis enabled a simple form of data triangulation.
4. Preliminary Results
Kristiansand is a city and municipality in the southern part of Norway. In January 2020, Kristiansand
merged with two neighboring municipalities as part of a larger, national process to reduce the
number of municipalities in Norway. Kristiansand is currently Norway´s fifth largest city with about
112,000 citizens. Kristiansand has prioritized digitalization for years and the merger created new
opportunities in this area. The city is currently experimenting with smart city initiatives to better
understand how technology can contribute to improved city life and better citizen dialogue. Up to
now, however, no comprehensive smart city strategy exists.
The interviews with city officials revealed that the city has 8 ongoing smart city projects. They
emphasized different motivation factors for why the city engaged in smart city initiatives, including
170 Ongoing Research
improved service quality, citizen centric development, environmentally sustainable city
development and improved citizen dialogue. This input was used to develop a thorough
understanding of the type of smart city initiatives Kristiansand was working on. This understanding
was later communicated to citizens as we invited them to reflect on positive and negative
consequences related to human rights. Our findings corroborated existing literature in that smart
city initiatives can have both negative and positive impact on the right to privacy, security and
freedom of expression. Further, our findings indicate that such initiatives may also affect the right
to adequate standard of living, equal access to public service and the right to be innocent until
proven guilty. An overview of smart city initiatives and their potential impact on human rights is
showed in Table 1 below.
Table 1: Smart City Initiatives and Their Impact on Human Rights
Smart City Initiative Description Impact on Human Rights
GPS tracking Municipality provides an online map Negative impact on security for
snowplow and with the location of snowplows and snowplow drivers.
sweeper truck sweeper truck to inform where the truck Positive impact on quality of
has removed the snow or pebbles. service for citizens.
GPS tracking city Work in progress. The initiative enables Negative impact on privacy.
bikes citizens to rent a GPS tracked e-bicycle Positive impact on quality of
in the city to use whenever they like to. service.
Crisis management SMS service to inform citizens about Positive impact on security.
GPS tracking emergencies, such as floods, power Potentially negative impact on
outages, wildfires and terror. privacy.
Measure air quality Real time air quality measures using Negative impact on privacy.
small sensors to provide a better Positive on quality of service and
overview for citizens and professionals standard of living but only for
of the actual air quality. some. May increase inequality.
SMELT Heated cables in the ground of Positive on quality of service and
pedestrian areas linked to the weather standard of living but only for
forecast site Yr to be turned on when the some. May increase inequality.
weather dictates it.
iKRS: Citizen Collecting citizens' opinions concerning Positive and negative on
involvement app freedom of expression.
This app enables citizens to share their Potentially negative impact on
thoughts on a case within in the city, ask privacy.
questions, share pictures etc..
Listen to young Municipality uses social media to Positive and negative impact on
immigrants voices mobilize young people with minority freedom of expression.
backgrounds to participate in debates. Potentially negative on privacy.
Noise cancellation The harbor in Kristiansand undergoes Positive impact on quality of
at the harbor and many changes to reduce noise, automate service and standard of living for
electrification and use electricity gathered from those affected.
vehicles renewable energy resources.
Ongoing Research 171
5. Discussion and Outlook
Our results sugget that every smart city initiative may affect human rights, either positively,
negatively or both. The most frequently affected rights are privacy and security, which is in line with
findings from the literature (Berrehili & Belmekki, 2017; Gomede et al., 2018; Hoffman, 2018). While
privacy is typically challenged by smart city initiatives such as GPS tracking, sensors and
surveillance, security is likely to increase due to the same measures. However, also security can be
challenged as GPS tracking allows finding individuals and harming them. In our case, citizens were
able to track the location of snowplowers. Frustrated citizens approached the drivers, challenging
them to prioritize the roads that were important to them - often in a threating or unfriendly manner.
This caused the city to introduce a delay in the tracking to protect the safety of the drivers. We
furthermore identified the freedom of expression to be affected by smart city initiatives, which has
rarely been discussed in the smart city literature. Freedom of expression is assumed to increase by
citizens' engagement and participation in municipal politics and online debates as online platforms
offer easier access for many. In contrast, freedom of expression is challenged as the increase in
surveillance can lead to citizens being less willing to express themselves publicly. Furthermore, the
technical soluations can form barriers for individuals without the technological skills needed to take
part in online debates, who, thus, are excluded. Similarly, our respondents were concerned that the
right to equal access to public services is challenged as marginalized citizen groups such as the elderly
and immigrants may not have the technological skills needed to use online services. The problem
relates to the longstanding research theme of digital divide. The right to adequate standard of living
can be strengthened as smart cities aim to improve the quality of life in a city and to make platforms
more accessible, to automize manual processes and to reduce carbon emission. The SMELT case in
Kristiansand can serve as an example of how standard of living may improve for residents of central
Kristiansand. However, some of our respondents reflected that this might also lead to increased
differences as heated streets were limited to the city center.
Since our sample in the study is quite small and we did not consider smart cities as a holistic
concept but only shed lights on single smart city initiatives, the results cannot be generalized.
However, our findings already provide evidence for human rights violations. Our pilot study
provides examples how smart city development can affect human rights both positively and
negatively, but more in-depth studies are certainly needed to fully understand these consequences.
Although some attention has been paid to this issue by scholars from other disciplines, our
preliminary findings suggest that the issue deserves a more prominent place in the digital
government field.
A variety of angles can be considered in the pursuit of a better understanding of how smart city
development can affect human rights. However, as cities are for citizens, a stakeholder approach
might be appropriate. Studies identifying the different interests that motivate development may be
contrasted with studies analyzing the broad impact on different stakeholder groups in the city. This
is likely to uncover conflicts of interest and potentially dysfunctional or unintended consequences.
Further, studies from techno-optimist perspectives may be contrasted with critical studies
highlighting with potentially damaging outcomes to the future development of urban societies.
172 Ongoing Research
References
Anthopoulos, L. G. (2017). Understanding Smart Cities: A Tool for Smart Government or an Industrial Trick?
Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Berrehili, F. Z., & Belmekki, A. (2017). Privacy Preservation in the Internet of Things. Advances in
Upiquitous Networking 2, 163 175.
Canonico, P., Consiglio, S., Iacono, M. P., Mercurio, L., & Berni, A. (2015). Understanding Different
Organizational Roles in Smart City Platforms: Preliminary Evidence and Emerging Issues. In L. Mola,
F. Pennarola, & S. Za (Eds.), From Information to Smart Society. Environment, Politics and Economics.
Springer International Publishing.
citizen participation in Dublin, Ireland. GeoJournal, 84(1), 1 13.
Gomede, E., Gaffo, F. H., Briganó, G. U., de Barros, R. M., & Mendes, L. de S. (2018). Application of
computational intelligence to improve education in smart cities. Sensors (Switzerland), 18(1), 1 26.
Hashem, I. A. T., Chang, V., Anuar, N. B., Adewole, K., Yaqoob, I., Gani, A., Ahmed, E., Chiroma, H. (2016).
The role of big data in smart city. International Journal of Information Management, 36(5), 748 758.
Herscovici, A. (2018). New development: Lean Thinking in smart cities. Public Money & Management, 38(4),
320 324.
Hoffman, D. (2018). Privacy with big data: A framework. In Americas Conference on Information Systems
2018: Digital Disruption, AMCIS 2018.
Kommunal- og moderniseringsdepartementet. (2019). Smarte byer og kommuner i Norge -en kartlegging.
Lombardi, P., Giordano, S., Farouh, H., & Yousef, W. (2012). Modelling the smart city performance.
Innovation, 25(2), 137 149.
Marsal-Llacuna, M.-L. (2017). Building Universal Socio-cultural Indicators for Standardizing the
579.
Nam, T., & Pardo, T. A. (2011). Conceptualizing smart city with dimensions of technology, people, and
institutions. In 12th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o 2011) (pp.
282 291).
Oliveira, A., & Campolargo, M. (2015). From Smart Cities to Human Smart Cities. In 2015 48th Hawaii
International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 2336 2344).
Plachkinova, M., Vo, A., & Alluhaidan, A. (2016). Emerging trends in smart home security, privacy, and
digital forensics. In 22nd Americas Conference on Information Systems.
Reuter, T. K. (2019). Human rights and the city: Including marginalized communities in urban development
and smart cities. Journal of Human Rights, 18(4), 382 402.
UCLG Committee on Social Inclusion Participatory Democracy and Human Rights. (2012). European
Charter for the Safeguarding of Human Rights in the City. Barcelona, Spain.
Ongoing Research 173
UCLG Committee on Social Inclusion Participatory Democracy and Human Rights. (2016). Global Charter-
Agenda for Human Rights in the City. Barcelona, Spain.
United Nations. (n.d.). Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Retrieved from
https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
Vanolo, A. (2014). Smartmentality: The Smart City as Disciplinary Strategy. Urban Studies, 51(5), 883 898.
Walsham, G. (1995). Interpretive case studies in IS research: nature and method. European Journal of
Information Systems, 4(2), 74 81.
About the Authors
Leif Skiftenes Flak
Leif Skiftenes Flak is professor in Information systems and director of CeDiT Centre for Digital
Transformation at the University of Agder. Flak has close to 20 years of experience with research on
digitalization in the public sector. He has extensive national and international project experience and has
served on a variety of reference groups and expert committees in organisations such as the Norwegian
Health Directorate, the Norwegian Auditor General and the Norwegian Agency for Public and Financial
Management. Flak is an active member of the international academic communities related to digital
government and information systems.
Sara Hofmann
Sara Hofmann is Associate Professor in Information Systems at the University of Agder in Kristiansand,
Norway, and member of the Centre for Digital Transformation (CeDiT). Her research focuses on the
digitalization of the public sector. In particular, she examines how (potential) users deal with digital
technology and the impact of digitalization on individuals, groups and society. Sara is head of the E-
Government Competence Center at the international research network ERCIS.