A Risk Assessment Framework for Smart City Design Phase

Smart cities encounter numerous risks, including technical and non-technical risks, on account of exchanging large volumes of data for different services; therefore, understanding and assessing risks for their management becomes essential. In this paper, a risk assessment framework for smart cities, based on a BLOC-ICE systems approach, is proposed. The framework outcomes are analyzed based on the data collected from a sample smart city to understand the importance of risks and the ways to mitigate or avoid such risks. The analysis of risk in the framework is based on the Dempster–Shafer and Bayesian theories, which can be used to assess the risk and its impact based on a particular smart city environment. In this paper, the focus is on design phase risks. The outcome of the analysis shows that strategic risks, stakeholder engagement, regulatory compliance, business continuity, and financial risks are important during the design phase and decision makers should develop measures to address these risks, which, otherwise, can have consequential impacts during the development and operation phase. The paper also provides some research direction on risk assessment.