ResiSC: A system for building resilient smart city communication networks

Abstract

Smart city networks are critical for delivering essential services such as healthcare, education, and business operations. However, these networks are highly susceptible to a range of threats, including natural disasters and intentional cyberattacks, which can severely disrupt their functionality. To address these vulnerabilities, we present the resilient smart city (ResiSC) system, designed to enhance the resilience of smart city communication networks through a topological design approach. Our system employs a graph‐theoretic algorithm to determine the optimal network topology for a given set of nodes, aiming to maximize connectivity while minimizing link provisioning costs. We introduce two novel connectivity measurements, All Nodes Reachability (ANR) and Sum of All Nodes Reachability (SANR), to evaluate network resilience. We applied our approach to data from two public universities of different sizes, simulating various attack scenarios to assess the robustness of the resulting network topologies. Evaluation results indicate that our solution improves network resilience against targeted attacks by 38% compared to baseline methods such as k‐nearest neighbours (k‐NN) graphs, while also reducing the number of additional links and their associated costs. Results also indicate that our proposed solution outperforms baseline methods like k‐NN in terms of network resilience against targeted attacks by 41%. This work provides a practical framework for developing robust smart city networks capable of withstanding diverse threats.