Is Smartness Risky? A Framework to Evaluate Smartness in Cyber-Physical Systems

New technologies have become a significant part of peoples' everyday lives. Smart systems that integrate information and communication technologies (ICTs) and ubiquitous computing interact with humans and the physical environment, providing in return some utility. Many of those systems can be classified as cyber-physical systems (CPSs), from smart objects and autonomous vehicles to smart cities and industrial applications, transportation systems and healthcare. These new technologies come with new vulnerabilities and risks that are not fully studied yet, exposing the safety and security of smart systems. Moreover, the increasing complexity that comes together with smartness hinders the identification of the crucial features that characterize smartness and how they affect the systems' attributes relevant for risk. Therefore, we propose a framework of smartness in CPSs with four dimensions, namely i) degree of integration, ii) real-time feedback control, iii) level of automation and iv) degree of cooperative control. Moreover, this paper illustrates a case study of the recent aviation accidents of Boeing 737 MAX, related to the erroneous operation of an autonomous flight control system. We analyze the accidents' reported root causes with regard to our framework of smartness and, subsequently, we identify the interactions within the smart system that remained undetected during the risk analyses.