Journal: Elsevier Sustainable Cities and Society (SCIE indexed with JCR impact factor)
Special issue: Towards Secure, Privacy-Preserving, and Reliable Smart Cities and Society
Submission deadline: August 1, 2017

Smart city is a vision proposed by many governments to integrate information and communication technology (ICT) solutions into the critical infrastructures of their cities and society with the goal of improving the quality of life of their citizens. Current examples of cities that are incorporating smart city principles include New York, London, Paris, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Sydney, Toronto, Tokyo, Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong, etc. Consequently, research activities in smart-city-related technologies proliferate in recent years. The research spectrum spans across multiple critical infrastructures in our society, from power grid to water system, from transportation to communication, from finance to healthcare. These systems are interconnected by multiple layers of public and private networks, forming a web of critical cyber-physical infrastructures. Failure of one component may result in cascading effect on others.

The objective of this special issue is to promote three important yet often forgotten properties while constructing the next generation of critical cyber-physical infrastructure in our society:

- security
- privacy
- reliability

These properties have to be incorporated into the early phases of designing and implementing any critical cyber-physical infrastructure in a safe and smart city. Addressing potential security, privacy, and reliability concerns before the infrastructure is in place will determine the success of the projects. In order for a smart city to offer increases in efficiency and the quality of urban life, citizens within smart cities must feel confident and secure enough to participate in the smart city. Without the citizens’ interest, the smart city is obsolete. Therefore, fundamental protections for the city’s users are paramount to the success of the smart city.

This special issue covers a broad range of research topics in the areas of security, privacy protection, and reliability of a city's or a society’s critical assets, including power plants, water supply, transportation systems, hospital, libraries, schools, different levels of government agencies, etc. Some sample topics are:

- availability, reliability, security of cyber-physical systems
- critical infrastructure protection
- cryptographic technique application
- intrusion detection and prevention
- system vulnerability analysis
- security of cloud computing (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, DaaS, MBaaS) for critical infrastructures
- security and privacy concerns of Internet-of-Things (IoTs) and mobile devices
- secure / privacy-preserving big data collection, data sharing, and data integration
- secure / privacy-preserving data mining, data science and data analytics
- data anonymization
- risk analysis and management
- trust analysis and management
- emergency management
- public safety in urban planning and social events
- terrorist attacks on critical infrastructures and resources, such as food, energy, and water
- security and privacy concerns of e-health, e-banking, e-government systems
- digital forensics and investigation on IoTs and smart devices
- criminal behaviour analysis for securing smart cities
- security, privacy, and information sharing policies
- trust models and game theory
- smart cards and RFID security
- social engineering on smart city devices and services
- fault detection in critical infrastructures
- dependability, survivability, resilience of critical infrastructures
- systems/services reliability engineering
- disaster recovery with smart technologies

Only original manuscripts (with less than 30% overlapping with previous publications) can be submitted, according to the ‘Guide for Authors’ published on the Sustainable Cities and Societies website http://www.journals.elsevier.com/sustainable-cities-and-society/. As regards the online submission system of Sustainable Cities and Societies, the authors are invited to follow the link "Submit your Paper", located in the main page of the Journal website, and submit manuscript to Article Type "VSI:Securing Smart Cities" in Sustainable Cities and Societies.

Link to special issue:
https://www.journals.elsevier.com/sustainable-cities-and-society/call-for-papers/special-issue-on-towards-secure-privacy-preserving-and-relia


Guest Editors:
Dr. Benjamin C. M. Fung (primary contact)
Canada Research Chair in Data Mining for Cybersecurity
Associate Professor
McGill University, Canada
Web: http://dmas.lab.mcgill.ca/fung/
E-mail: ben.fung (_at_) mcgill.ca

Dr. Farkhund Iqbal
Associate Professor & Graduate Program Director
Zayed University, UAE
E-mail: Farkhund.Iqbal (_at_) zu.ac.ae

Dr. Awais Ahmad
Foreign Assistant Professor
Yeungnam University, Republic of Korea
E-mail: awais (_at_) knu.ac.kr