Smart cities, and smart city technologies, are emerging in many local contexts across Canada. Smart city technologies move quickly from development to adoption, often outpacing the social and political deliberations necessary to consider their effects in detail–particularly their effects on Canadians’ privacy.

This research furthers the conversation on smart cities in Canada.

You can read about the privacy implications of smart city technologies here, where you will also be able to download our full report on smart city privacy later in January/February 2019.

National survey about smart city privacy

Our team conducted a national survey on Canadians’ attitudes towards smart city privacy across Canada.  We discovered that Canadians have a high level of concern about their privacy in the context of the growing use of smart city technologies.  Canadians were particularly concerned about  the sale of their personal information and the use of their personal information to target them with ads.  Read our report and access the data here.

Smarty city privacy map

Our team collected detailed information on smart city technologies in Canadian cities and plotted them out on a map that you can explore.  Use the smart city privacy map to learn about the privacy implications of smart city technologies in Canada.

Funding

This study was funded by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC). The views expressed herein are those of the project researchers and do not necessarily reflect those of the OPC.

This research was undertaken, in part, thanks to funding from the Canada Research Chairs program and McMaster University.