According to the predictions, by 2030 there will be 43 mega-cities with the population of 10 million people. With the further IoT and Big Data development large cities with have a range of tools at their disposal to solve many tasks.

Leading ones at the digital market are the suppliers of intellectual, infrastructure, IT and telecom solutions:
• Alcatel-Lucent provides network and telecom products and technologies.
• CISCO optimizes urban networks and calculates the data from connected devices.
• Hygiea is the first company in the world dealing with waste utilization for both inside and outside application.
• Smart WAVE Technologies designs IoT wireless networks and configurations.
• CIMCON Lightning helps public utilities to work more reasonable by optimizing power consumption and expenses on housing maintenance.
• Siemens offers a complex approach to determine the investment priorities for the companies and state authorities.

In 2019 the volume of initiative financing on the matter of “smart cities” may be 95,8 billion US dollars. Asia-Pacific region accounts for 40% of global expenses. Following cities are the leaders to develop such area of intellectual initiatives:
• Singapore brings the concept of “smart city” into a new level. The city is “full” of the sensors which aim to track everything starting from the streets to remain clean and traffic movement. Singapore actively manages urban traffic with the sensors, phased lights and helps the drivers to find free parking slots. City also uses an open data platform available for the citizens.
• Barcelona uses power-effective LED system making it possible to get data about pollution, humidity, temperature, number of people and noise level.
• San-Francisco is the cradle of innovations. The city is a starting point to improve the quality of eco-space and has already achieved the rate of 80% by waste utilization!

Althogh “smart city” gives many benefits thanks to connected devices, the concept itself creates many new threats concerning theft of personal data. It is all about data collecting and processing. These matters will only get worse due to constant increase of collected data.

Anyway only relevant analytical data can bring the result.

Technologies are rapidly developing and it is becoming harder and harder for the authorities to comply with all the regulations of confidentiality policy and data break-ins. As well as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in Europe was approved all the world should follow searching for the means to regulate data in “smart cities”.

Besides intellectual technologies for “smart cities” and data regulation policies state authorities and large businesses in such area need to consider carefully the following matters.

Protect and trust. Technologies allow us to do more, but what about confidentiality and trust issues? As a result of data break-ins new idea of “closed” data appeared. Rules and policies regarding data collection are to be strict in the matters of what is collected, why and how careful the data is stored.

Encourage. The authorities do not encourage the citizens to participate in public activities. Even if to take the fact that the citizens and their experience have brought “smart city” concept into life, still deserved rights and commitment are worsened.

Be ready. Citizens have to be ready for changes. For instance, when Madrid (Spain) decided to take measures against pollution, it grew into a political conflict and then people fought against processing of personal data.

Be socially united. Where did it go and how to get it back, even when it comes to future mega-cities? Social unity is all that was mentioned before, a safe space to live, love, grow, learn and think of the future ahead.