Privacy and Smart Cities: A Bibliometric Analysis

The growing adoption of smart cities technologies provides local governments with a unique opportunity to leverage a wide range of digital technologies to create more efficient and more effective digital services. Such services provide clear benefits for citizens in terms of accessibility within urban areas and overall quality of life. However, smart cities applications tend to rely on citizens’ generated data that is typically analysed to further improve service delivery. The collection and use of this data may raise potential privacy concerns for citizens as they are often unaware of how and where the data is stored, and how it will be used and protected. This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of the existing literature related to privacy and smart cities, provides a brief summary and the main topics that have been addressed in the academic literature. The findings from this study are of interest to academic researchers but could also inform local governments and policymakers’ approach to smart cities technologies.