Enhancing Soft Target Protection in Smart Cities: Comparing Stakeholder and Citizen Perspectives

The protection of public spaces against serious threats such as violent attacks and terrorism is an ongoing challenge. Smart city initiatives aim to support security actors by implementing advanced capabilities that support automatic monitoring, data collection, interpretation, and integration of data streams. To do so successfully, societal acceptance is one a core requisite. However, direct stakeholders (i.e., users and people directly affected by the technologies) often have different views on what is acceptable or of benefit when it comes to the deployment of advanced technologies compared to the general public (citizens). While this is acknowledged, direct comparisons of stakeholders and citizens are rare, leaving a knowledge gap for decision- and policy-makers on how to choose and/or inform the citizens about the deployment of specific capabilities for public space protection. In this paper, we offer such a comparison of perspectives for soft target protection in public spaces. We identify considerably overlaps in attitudes, but also demonstrate that citizen perspectives may be more nuanced and varied than those of direct stakeholders. These findings carry implications for deployments and meaningful public engagements about smart city security.