The global Smart Cities market is anticipated to experience substantial growth in revenue over the next few years and reach $6.5bn by 2032, according to research from Guidehouse Insights. Much of this growth is driven by the pressures that rising temperatures and significant climate changes are placing on countries in terms of finding new ways to ensure a sustainable future.
As more and more nations turn towards smart city development, authorities are discovering that while there are a myriad of benefits (e.g. cleaner air, less traffic, smarter waste management, and enhanced public safety) with these come a set of complex challenges when you are developing an ecosystem largely based on data-driven solutions.
Consider that smart cities leverage AI, IoT, 5G and a number of other emerging technologies to collect and analyse huge volumes of data in real-time. While this data is crucial in informing decision making and optimising operations to increase resource efficiency and improve services, there is clearly a significant cyber security risk at play when it comes to an entire smart city ecosystem.
From this perspective, cyber security is not just about protecting against known threats; but about anticipating and managing risks in these complex urban environments. One way in which to ensure this is delivered is virtualising smart cities with digital twins to help better manage areas and build more resilient communities.
The first instance of a digital twin of a nation was completed last year with the introduction of Virtual Singapore, a project led by the Singapore Land Authority that involved the creation of a detailed 3D model of the entire country. This has provided Singapore with a platform for developing and testing new technologies.
Other similar projects are taking place in the UK, US, Germany, Spain, Australia and the Nordics. Indeed, in Europe alone there are currently around 170 live projects to develop smart cities and their infrastructure.
Estonia for example, is another country that has embraced the use of a digital-twin based smart city model that uses real-time data to help better manage urban areas, improve quality of life, and build more resilient communities via cognitive virtualisation.
A collaboration with Auve Tech, the City of Tartu, and the University of Tartu has seen the introduction of a ‘Smart City Cyber Range’ project representing a simulated environment of IT systems and tools utilised in the city domain, as well as various cyber-attack scenarios.
This provides stakeholders (city and municipality organisations, traffic operators, critical national infrastructure companies and other third parties operating smart city systems) with the scope to ensure collaboration across key security areas including preparedness management, and to integrate training and testing of technologies and systems into a comprehensive cyber defence strategy.
The project is particularly important for the City of Tartu, which in recent times has experienced cyber attacks impacting some of its services. This includes a data leak that saw a database of 20,000 users of the city’s public bike share system compromised due to a security weakness, as well as a leak of personal and health related data from a genetic testing company in the city that saw the records of around 10,000 people affected.
The Mayor of Tartu, Urmas Klaas, previously commented that: “The Smart City Cyber Range project is a critical step forward for Tartu as we continue to embrace the future of urban living. In an era where data drives decisions and technology powers our daily lives, ensuring robust cybersecurity is not just a necessity – it’s a responsibility. By simulating real-world scenarios and training our teams in a controlled environment, we are fortifying Tartu against potential threats and paving the way for a secure, resilient, and thriving community.”
What a Smart City Cyber Range enables is for smart cities to train their cybersecurity teams and departments to respond to the ever-evolving landscape of cyber threats in a simulated, controlled environment.
This includes for example, the introduction of red team exercises whereby a cyber-attack is simulated on a smart city’s infrastructure, with the aim of the training exercise being to identify where the weaknesses in the defences lie and how these could be strengthened.
Similarly, there are incident response exercises that can be carried out to simulate a cyber-attack such as a data breach, ransomware attack or distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack and test the effectiveness of the smart city’s incident response plan in the face of these.
What is clear is that the ongoing digital transformation of cities and countries is not going to slow down. But accompanying these advanced, connected, urban environments must be a clear strategy for how to address cybersecurity concerns to effectively mitigate risks and ensure the highest levels of security for residents and all other stakeholders.
This means the most proactive preparation and highest levels of strategic response planning in order to prepare for and counter the ever-changing landscape of cyber threats. The delivery of hands-on training sessions in a hyper-realistic, simulated virtual environment is one way in which the smart cities of today are making sure they are here for tomorrow and beyond.
Lauri Almann is the co-founder and Chairman of the Board of CybExer Technologies. Prior to his work in the private sector, Lauri served for more than 10 years at various top-level civil service positions. He graduated from Tartu University Law School in Estonia and holds a Master’s degree in International Law with distinction from the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C. where he studied as the Fulbright Scholar.
