Protecting information and core infrastructure against any threat and malicious activity requires maintaining adequate security mechanisms in smart cities. When it comes to smart city security, there are a lot of security challenges that pertain to the underlying smart city ecosystem.

In particular, the physical hardware and software that are implemented in smart cities are made by manufacturers without proper cybersecurity testing. Using such insecure products will lead to security vulnerabilities and eventually compromise the entire ecosystem of the city. At times, it will also lead to the shutdown of vital city services that put citizens’ lives at risk.

As cities try to become smart, many of the smart city applications present a number of security and privacy issues and challenges. Thus, the smart city should be able to protect the information involved against unwanted entry, dissemination, destruction, modification and annihilation in accordance with the fundamentals of information security. Confidentiality, integrity and availability of information security fundamentals should be satisfied in every aspect of the smart city.

There is widespread concern among the general public about how companies – and the government – ​​use personal data. 79% of adults say they are at least somewhat concerned about how companies use the data they collect about them, including 36% who say they are very concerned about the issue.

Switching to LED will provide energy savings of up to 70%, and by adding smart controls, savings increase to 80%. By using sensors to detect when people or cars are present, lighting can be dimmed when the streets are empty.

They can be metered in real time or data can be collected on energy consumption based on lighting in the city. This data can be used to gain insights to create benchmarks and improvement initiatives to further drive energy efficiency that reduces CO2 emissions.

Continuous energy consumption measurement and data provide new insights that support more informed decisions to help improve operational efficiency and optimize lighting performance.

Continuous monitoring and data collection of energy consumption facilitates the achievement of sustainability goals and provides data to support the city’s sustainability programs and goals.

LED street lighting coupled with smart controls reduces energy consumption by up to 80%. Connected LED lighting enables intelligent light control and enables the collection of data for each point of light, which is then transmitted over a network and analyzed to provide new insights.

By adding presence sensors to connected street lights, energy consumption can be further reduced by using software to automatically dim light levels if no people or vehicles are detected.

Data collected from street lighting can be stored locally or in the cloud, depending on the customer’s preferences or data governance policy. The City owns the data and may share it with third parties or independent software providers.

Smart lighting makes the urban environment safe for people at night, while improving the quality of life both at night and during the day, while enabling a more harmonious existence of technology, people, flora and fauna, which cannot be made with traditional technology. Ultimately, a smart lighting infrastructure provides a ubiquitous network across a city that can be the initial backbone for smart-city services and technologies.

Smart lighting consists of dimmable light emitting diode (LED) luminaires with sensor and controller interfaces, a control system and a supporting infrastructure.

The control system is composed of lighting nodes, a communication network with one or more lighting node controllers and a human interface. Smart lighting, when adaptive lighting is implemented, can reduce lighting energy consumption by up to 50% while providing higher quality light for improved safety.

Finally, the use of smart lighting infrastructure as a starting point for smart-city devices and services is introduced. The use of surplus power available in lighting power lines is discussed, as well as the use of the controller network for additional services or data collection and transmission.

Smart lighting is available and offers significant potential benefits to cities. Smart lighting seems to be the logical starting point of any smart city plan.

Smart Lighting relies on data to address public lighting challenges.

The most visible use of Smart Lighting is obviously the automatic control of equipment. By equipping streetlights with technologies such as cameras, photocells or IoT sensors, local authorities can collect multiple data: street traffic and traffic conditions in real time.

Switching from traditional equipment to less energy-consuming equipment, such as LED lamps, generates energy savings even with constant lighting. With a smart lighting system, communities can take their energy efficiency to the next level. With intelligent street lighting control, only the necessary energy is actually consumed.

Reducing electricity consumption has a direct impact on the community’s budget. Smart lighting is precisely at the crossroads of these two problems. In addition to lowering energy bills, smart lighting helps reduce maintenance costs for public lighting equipment.

While maintenance has traditionally required the intervention of municipal employees or specialist companies, it can now be done remotely with better cost control. In addition, a Smart Lighting system facilitates the detection of equipment anomalies and, thanks to data analysis, the detection of billing anomalies, which are also sources of savings.

The reduction of the public lighting budget is directly proportional to the initial investment made by the authorities. Investing in a performing Smart Lighting system would even bring savings of 100%.

Legacy infrastructure can be retrofitted and new buildings built with sensors to not only facilitate real-time space management and ensure public safety, but also monitor the structural strength status of buildings. Sensors can detect wear and tear and notify officials when repairs are needed. Citizens can help in this matter by notifying officials through a smart city app when repairs are needed in buildings and other public infrastructure such as potholes. Sensors can also be used to detect leaks in water mains and other pipe systems, helping to reduce costs and improve the efficiency of public workers.

Smart city technologies also bring efficiencies to urban manufacturing and urban agriculture, including job creation, energy efficiency, space management and fresher goods for consumers. Smart cities use their network of connected IoT devices and other technologies to achieve their goals of improving quality of life and economic growth. Successful smart cities follow four steps:

• Collection – Smart sensors throughout the city gather data in real time.
• Analysis – Data collected by smart sensors is evaluated to gain meaningful insights.
• Communication – Insights that were found in the analysis phase are communicated to decision makers through strong communication networks.
• Actions – Cities use insights from data to create solutions, optimize operations and manage assets, and improve the quality of life for residents.

While cities already present environmental advantages, such as smaller geographic footprints that have less impact on ecological systems, they also have negative environmental impacts with emissions, such as extreme use of fossil fuels.

The network of smart city technologies could mitigate these harmful effects. Switching to an electric public transport system would not only reduce fuel emissions, but could also have the advantage of working closely with the city’s electricity infrastructure to minimize the impact of charging batteries during peak hours of electricity use.

In addition, with proper coordination, electric vehicles could also be used to regulate the frequency of the city’s power grid when it is not in operation.

Rural development funding through the EAFRD is part of a wider framework of European Structural and Investment Funds (ESI funds), which also includes regional development, social, cohesion and fisheries funds. They are managed at national level, by each EU member state, based on partnership agreements, strategic plans that underline the country’s objectives and investment priorities.

Examples of expected achievements:

• Over 184,000 people will benefit from training under the RDP. Over 60,000 farmers and micro and small business owners in rural areas will receive specific advisory services; more than 200 collaborative projects will be supported, including the establishment of 24 Operational Groups under the European Innovation Partnership (EIP).
• The RDP will support investments in the modernization of nearly 3,400 farms and cooperatives, the development of over 30,000 small farms and the support of over 9,400 young farmers.
• In the forestry sector, investments will be supported to expand the limited network of forest roads by over 900 km.
• The RDP aims to modernize and support the investments of almost 300 food processing units, to establish 62 new producer groups with the participation of 620 holdings; nearly 15,000 farmers will take part in a mutual fund so that they can better mitigate the effects of adverse weather and other risks.
• Over 1.3 million ha of agricultural land (almost 10% of Romania’s total agricultural land) and over 800,000 ha (12%) of forests will benefit from payments for the environment and climate, or for forest conservation; almost 3000 projects will be supported for the establishment/development of non-agricultural enterprises in rural areas and almost 27000 jobs will be created, of which over 2000 will be created under LEADER. The program will support 120 Local Action Groups (LAGs) that will implement Local Development
• Strategies (LDS) covering 100% of eligible rural territory.
• The RDP will support almost 800 projects to improve small-scale rural infrastructure and living conditions for around 27% of rural areas.

In short, Smart Villages can be understood as “rural communities that refuse to wait for change to happen”. Such communities are made up of rural people who take the initiative to mobilize and explore practical solutions to the day-to-day challenges they face, as well as take advantage of new opportunities to improve their quality of life and standard of living. live. And there are of course thousands of rural communities across the EU doing this in different ways.

The problem is, of course, that smart villages require smart national/regional authorities to support them – and in particular to program and strategically target the EU funds that are made available. And here we start to get impatient, where we already start to feel the potential of a lost opportunity in Romania.

And it would be a great loss, because there is no doubt that this concept of “Smart Village” is both relevant and appropriate to the Romanian rural context. It is clear, for example, from the recent work of Romania’s National Rural Network that some inspiring examples of smart villages already exist in Romania, where “traditional and new networks and services are enhanced through digital technologies, telecommunications, innovations and better use of knowledge”. It is also likely that many other inspiring examples remain to be identified.

These existing examples are not the result of a coordinated or coherent effort, but result from numerous ad hoc factors, including the vision and personal commitment of local community leaders; various NGO initiatives focused on issues ranging from poverty alleviation to cultural heritage; innovative use of rural development funds and other funds; various other development initiatives funded with bilateral/multilateral assistance over the past 25-30 years.

The launch of the Smart Village concept in Romania could therefore be considered an idea whose time has finally arrived.

For the EU, the overall level of digital literacy among adults was lowest in rural areas (e.g. only 48% of the rural population had basic or advanced digital skills) and highest in urban areas (e.g. 62 % of adults living in urban settlements). There is also a lack of centrality in the sense of administrative, cultural, logistical, social, educational organizations.

Digital innovation requires access to digital networks, the skills to exploit them, and the individual and community capacity and willingness to seek change and develop solutions to meet social, economic and environmental challenges. The expansion of high-speed broadband to reach a growing number of rural communities has laid the groundwork for rural stakeholders to play a role in the rapidly developing digital economy and society.

The definition of a smart village ecosystem can be given as an ecosystem consisting of a network of micro enterprises, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), farmers, local and central government employees, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), small private industrial units , logistics, ICT technologies and services. It also acts as a facilitator and helps to connect the villagers with the external environment and certain resources such as financial resources, natural resources, semi-skilled, unskilled and skilled human resources and an industrial environment that interact with each other to provide more services. good for a smart village.

There are four broad areas of interest in the smart village ecosystem. The first would be digital services, which include services such as smart transport, various ICT services, e-books, smart education, various online services for smart village residents and better energy efficiency. The second area of ​​interest of the smart village ecosystem is the institutions or units that comprise the village veterans, different levels of schools, village committees, smart information centers and so on. The third area of ​​focus is resources which include land, energy, financial resources, human resources (unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled human resources), health care facilities and medical resources (drug stores, doctors, paramedical facilities etc.), water , agriculture. The fourth and final focus area of ​​these smart villages is maintenance, which includes renewal and clean energy, self-sustainable irrigation, attractive investment destination, land mapping and efficient use of agricultural land.

Romania’s rural environment has undergone numerous changes, being, today, extremely important from the perspective of the significant share of people living in these areas. The changes in the rural environment were highlighted with Romania’s accession to the structures of the European Union, at which time the rural environment began to benefit from a series of specific programs and support measures, especially in the regions located in the lowlands, where the main activity is represented of agriculture.

Romania has experienced increased use of digital interaction with public authorities since the beginning of the pandemic. However, the potential remains high, given that more public services could be moved online, and a large part of the population and public sector employees still lack the necessary skills, while the potential in rural areas is untapped. Several measures have recently been taken, including the initiative for the creation of the Government Cloud, which will allow the interconnection of the databases of the main public institutions, the establishment of the National Council for Digital Transformation, or the digital transformation programs of SMEs.

For example, the electronic signature has become an obligation, whereas previously it was only an exception. The representatives of a retail company stated that, although the gap between Romania and Europe remained large, they observed rapid increases from year to year, which could lead to a change in the situation. In addition, the digital environment, which was not seen as an alternative until the pandemic, has gained momentum.

Romania had a great appetite for cash payments, especially in public administration. However, since the pandemic of March 2020, the electronic payment platform has improved by adding more than 50 public services that allow the payment of about 300 taxes and fees and has become accessible to legal entities. The change in the situation was seen in the number of users of the platforms, which increased this year by half the number of users already using the platform in the last decade.

Experts in the field believe that Romania has two major vulnerabilities in the digitization process, which represent major obstacles for the development of digital transformation: electronic identity or interoperability and limited digital skills. In the first case, there are large discrepancies in terms of Internet access between rural and urban areas. In rural areas, only 77% of households have access to the Internet, and the share drops to only 60% in poor families. These households cannot afford the cost of such services, although the price of the subscription has decreased in recent years. Another major problem is the lack of interconnectivity between the various public administration databases, which has led to increased bureaucracy.

Romania ranks last in the EU in terms of the use of digital public services, digital skills among individuals and also in some companies and public institutions, ranking 27th out of 29 countries in this chapter.

The government launched a public policy proposal related to the digitization of public administration and if approved, the new e-government policy would be implemented in 10 years.

Despite various advantages, smart cities have many national security and cyber concerns. Homes, infrastructure, transportation, communications, government services, as well as commercial and industrial services are controlled by intelligent systems that depend on artificial intelligence and the Internet. If these services are targeted by a successful cyber attack, the consequences in this case would be disastrous for national security and people’s lives.

Many countries have adopted smart city strategies, projecting an image of themselves as countries that keep up with modernization and use the benefits of the AI ​​revolution so that they can attract these innovative minds, a growing trend after the global financial crisis of 2008. As a result, many skilled people moved from cities like Paris, New York and London to other cities that were able to attract them by adopting the new smart model.

This can result in improving the quality of life for individuals by providing original solutions to traditional problems such as pollution problems, traffic congestion and energy waste. Good planning and the incorporation of smart technology into everyday life can help rationalize the use of resources, reduce harmful emissions and control traffic.

Smart initiatives enable people to access government and private services and complete all transactions easily and efficiently. Adopting such initiatives also helps improve strategic services such as education, health care and utilities.

Smart city strategies can help reduce carbon emissions and pollution in general by adopting clean industries and green buildings and depending on clean energy resources such as electricity, solar power, wind power and water power. Pollution reduction can also be achieved by adopting a smart transport system based on either autonomous cars or manual cars that use electricity and solar energy instead of fuel.

The smart city model provides an overall framework for overcoming the problem of traffic congestion by relying on smart technology and technological solutions to provide accurate, instantaneous information about the causes and points of traffic congestion. This is achieved by collecting big data from sensor systems installed on the streets, as well as CCTV and smart traffic lights that operate automatically according to traffic density, giving more time to busier streets.

Smart cities basically depend on electronic systems; citizens have access to both government and private services through smart apps. The fact that no humans are involved limits the possibility of corruption. If someone tried to tamper with the system by trying any illegal activity, technical problems would occur and then it would not be difficult to find the perpetrator.

Advanced communities have certain characteristics that make them attract foreign investment, such as their outstanding urban organization, their smart infrastructure, their well-informed citizens, their use of clean energy, as well as their cosmopolitan culture and their openness to the world. These features not only attract investors but also tourists who would like to see and try the modern technologies used in these cities.

Smart city builders are concerned with the wise management of available resources such as energy, water and natural resources. For example, optimal ways of using space are pursued, by designing buildings and parking lots that can accommodate as many people and cars as possible. They also pay special attention to green areas and spaces that separate buildings from each other, which would help overcome problems such as pollution and overcrowding.