# Vulnerability Assessment of Ubiquitous Cities Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process
## 4 Conclusions & Recommendations  
The study warns about the emerging risks to the modern cities (U-cities). It provides a well-defined systematic approach to identify and quantify the risks imposed to communication-based future cities. As referred in the Section 3, many studies have been conducted for risk assessment of smart cities but the focus on U-cities have been neglected overall so far. The study has an edge over the previous case studies by overcoming the issue of statistical analysis that might become practically impossible for 32 types of natural and man-made hazards.  
A U-city provides solutions to ease urban management and help mitigate problems exacerbating major cities. With the advancements in technology, the reliance on these ubiquitous services and technologies are becoming ineluctable. Although, with the added connectivity and infrastructure, additional vulnerabilities have been induced. A comprehensive evaluation of these extended vulnerabilities is essential to foresee future risks and developing precautions in place early in the integration phase of ubiquitous cities. As per the initial analysis of the interconnectivity in the conducted research, it is identified that the services, which rely on minimal connections, need to be reinforced with backup ICTs to ensure a safe failure.  
The shift to ICTs-based urban management has not only to induce new vulnerabilities but has come up with new ICT-based hazards. For example, Malware has become the second most effective hazard after vandalism. Vandalism rules out to be the most influential due to a reduction in human-based securities that used work also as street crime watch. Natural hazards are mostly affecting the hardware of the technologies. However, satellite-based networks are affected by severe weather and a Solar storm. Floods are the most damaging hazard due to their severe capability to damage the hardware and frequent occurrence under the climatic conditions of Melbourne. The impact of natural hazards fluctuates slightly more as compared to man-made hazards over different ICTs.  
The research is carried out with the assumption of general prevailing conditions. However, due to climatic conditions, man-made hazards including wars, terrorism, or any unforeseen socio-economic crises may develop different scenarios. It is strongly recommended to carry out a few detailed analyses under different scenarios. The presented preliminary studies are conducted for Melbourne, it is recommended to conduct further studies with improved methodologies for different cities around the world to identify more critical vulnerabilities of U-cities. Besides, the role of ICTs and IoT has grown to regional/ rural areas as well. There might be some interesting findings if regional areas are analyzed for their dependence on ICTs with a detailed vulnerability assessment.  
A follow up study is being carried out to identify the remedial measures and to evaluate the effectiveness under socio-economic constraints. However, to propose effective mitigation plans that  
Figure 11: Vulnerabilities of ICTs against natural and man-made hazards.  
have undergone a comprehensive evaluation procedure are under research. Reduction in susceptibilities of ICTs as well as controlling hazards wherever possible are the initial points of considerations.  
Conceptualization, M.A.U.R.T. and N.M.; Data curation, M.A.U.R.T.; Formal analysis, M.A.U.R.T. and C.Y.W.; Investigation, M.A.U.R.T. and C.Y.W.; Methodology, M.A.U.R.T. and C.Y.W.; Software, M.A.U.R.T. and C.Y.W.; Supervision, M.A.U.R.T. and N.M.; Validation, M.A.U.R.T.; Visualization, M.A.U.R.T. and C.Y.W.; Writing--original draft, M.A.U.R.T. and C.Y.W.; Writing--review & editing, M.A.U.R.T. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research received no external funding.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.