To Trust, or not to Trust: Highlighting the Need for Data Provenance in Mobile Apps for Smart Cities

The popularity of smartphones makes them the most suitable devices to ensure access to services provided by smart cities; furthermore, as one of the main features of the smart cities is the participation of the citizens in their governance, it is not unusual that these citizens generate and share their own data through their smartphones. But, how can we know if these data are reliable? How can identify if a given user and, consequently, the data generated by him/her, can be trusted? On this paper, we present how the IES Cities’ platform integrates the PROV Data Model and the related PROV-O ontology, allowing the exchange of provenance information about user-generated data in the context of smart cities.