An Informed Consent Model for Managing the Privacy Paradox in Smart Buildings

Smart Buildings are defined as the “buildings of the future” and use the latest Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to automate building operations and services. This is to both increase operational efficiency as well as maximize occupant comfort and environmental impact. However, these “smart devices” - typically used with default settings - also enable the capture and sharing of a variety of sensitive and personal data about the occupants. Given the non-intrusive nature of most IoT devices, individuals have little awareness of what data is being collected about them and what happens to it downstream. Even if they are aware, convenience overrides any privacy concerns, and they do not take sufficient steps to control the data collection, thereby exacerbating the privacy paradox. At the same time, IoT-based building automation systems are revealing highly sensitive insights about the building occupants by synthesizing data from multiple sources and this can be exploited by the device vendors and unauthorised third parties. To address the tension between privacy and convenience in an increasingly connected world, we propose a user-centric informed consent model to foster an accurate user discretion process for privacy choice in IoT-enabled smart buildings. The proposed model aims to (a) inform and increase user awareness about how their data is being collected and used, (b) provide fine-grained visibility into privacy compliance and infringement by IoT devices, and (c) recommend corrective actions through nudges (or soft notifications). We illustrate how our proposed consent model works through a use case scenario of a voice-activated smart office.

1 Introduction

Smart Buildings (SBs) are buildings that use creative design, smart engineering and information and communication technologies (ICT) to automate and self-regulate their environment and operations [15]. A key feature that differentiates a SB from ordinary buildings is the flexible, automated set of human-centric services that it offers. From the moment people step inside, and until the moment they leave, a SB is capable of automatically tracking them at any given time and adjusting its facilities' settings according to their needs, preferences and feedback [32]. The Internet of Things (IoT) is the key enabling technology that transforms normal buildings into” smart” buildings with SBs employing millions of small, diverse, and interactive sensing and actuating devices to automate building operations and services. Market research predicts that by 2025 the total number of connected IoT devices will reach 75.44 billion, representing an increase of 146% from 2020 [28]. Similarly, by 2024, consumers will interact with voice assistants on 8.4 billion devices [19]. There are increasing efforts being made by vendors to design IoT devices so that they can easily be discovered by and commanded through voice-operated and controlled digital assistant platforms. At the same time, the companies behind digital assistant technologies are also seeking new business models to monetize the voice data collected by their platforms [19].