Metrics for Ensuring Security and Privacy of Information Sharing Platforms for Improved City Resilience

Abstract

City resilience is a pressing issue worldwide since the majority of the population resides in urban areas. When disaster strikes, the consequences will be more severe in the cities. To achieve resilience, different organizations, agencies and the public should share information during a disaster. ICT-based community engagement is used for strengthening resilience. The authors propose a set of metrics for assessing the security and privacy of information sharing tools for resilience. They then apply the selected metrics to a selection of information sharing tools. The authors' main finding is that most of them are reasonably well-protected, but with less than private default settings. They discuss the importance of security and privacy for different important categories of users of such systems, to better understand how these aspects affect the willingness to share information. Security and privacy is of particular importance for whistle-blowers that may carry urgent information, while volunteers and active helpers are less affected by the level of security and privacy.