Abstract

Cognitive cities are the next step in urban development, integrating AI, IoT, and big data to create smart, responsive environments that enhance quality of life and optimize resource usage. However, their interconnected systems pose significant cybersecurity challenges, such as maintaining data integrity, secure communication, and system resilience. This research introduces a security framework that combines blockchain and AI to address these challenges. Blockchain’s decentralized and tamper-resistant ledger guarantees data integrity and transparency, while its cryptographic methods offer strong protection against data tampering. In cognitive cities, blockchain establishes a secure, decentralized framework for managing large-scale data. Artificial intelligence enhances this by analyzing network traffic, detecting anomalies, and identifying potential security threats using machine learning models. The interaction between AI and blockchain enables real-time threat detection and mitigation, with AI flagging anomalies and blockchain ensuring the secure storage of events through its immutable ledger. This proactive approach strengthens the city’s security. The framework also includes secure communication protocols based on blockchain’s consensus mechanisms, ensuring encrypted data transmission. Additionally, a decentralized identity management system uses blockchain to provide secure digital identities for residents and devices, automating identity verification and access control. The framework’s effectiveness will be tested in a simulated cognitive city environment, focusing on smart healthcare, transportation, and energy management. Key performance indicators such as data integrity, secure communication, and system resilience will demonstrate the framework’s capacity to enhance cybersecurity in real-world cognitive city applications.

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