This study examines how the level of public sector integrity influences cyber resilience and the security of digital governance in smart city environments across Europe. The research aims to move beyond a purely technological understanding of cybersecurity by demonstrating that smart city resilience also depends on transparent public procurement, accountable institutional oversight, reliable data governance, and the public sector’s capacity to govern complex digital infrastructures. The study builds on existing concepts of public sector integrity, cyber resilience, digital governance, and smart city governance, with particular attention to the relationship between corruption risks, supplier dependency, vendor lock-in, and the institutional conditions required for secure digital transformation. The research employs a comparative, indicator-based approach. It examines six European countries—Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria—using public sector integrity indicators, cyber resilience indices, digital governance indicators, and public procurement risk proxies. As complementary explanatory dimensions, the analysis also considers supplier concentration, public procurement competition, and institutional control mechanisms. The findings suggest that, in the cases of Denmark, Finland, and Estonia, relatively high levels of public sector integrity are associated with strong cyber resilience and advanced digital governance capacity. Hungary and Romania display mixed profiles: both countries possess relatively strong formal cybersecurity capacities, while their integrity and public procurement indicators point to institutional vulnerabilities. Bulgaria emerges as the most vulnerable case among the countries examined, combining weaker integrity, lower cyber resilience, and more limited institutional control. The conclusions are relevant for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners alike, as they highlight that smart city cybersecurity cannot be ensured solely through firewalls and technical solutions. The study’s main contribution lies in integrating public sector integrity, public procurement governance, and cyber resilience within a common analytical framework for assessing the security of smart city governance in Europe.
Objectives: This study develops and validates a cyber-physical mathematical framework for synchronizing stochastic agricultural harvesting with deterministic industrial processing in regional sugar beet logistics. The framework addresses real-time coordination conflicts between distributed field supply nodes, limited transport capacity, dynamic field accessibility, and continuous factory demand. Prior work: Traditional static logistics models treat agro-industrial cargo as inert mass and primarily optimize spatial distance. Such approaches are poorly suited to environments characterized by high-frequency schedule nervousness, weather-driven field accessibility changes, shifting bottlenecks, and non-linear raw material degradation during temporary field storage. Approach: The proposed Digital Twin architecture combines dynamic Drum-Buffer-Rope (DBR) pull logic for shifting bottlenecks with rolling Model Predictive Control (MPC) and a multi-phase Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) heuristic. Spatial transport work is handled during seasonal stratification, feasible route assignment, and topological filtering; within the active rolling MILP core it is treated as a quasi-invariant structural term. This allows the optimization layer to focus on time-sensitive trade-offs between sucrose preservation, factory starvation avoidance, and logistical feasibility. Results: Empirical validation using an 11- year industrial dataset comprising more than 180,000 unique transactional cycles shows that the multi-phase heuristic achieves sub-second solver response times in the tested industrial scenarios, with the active MILP core converging within 0.45 seconds. Operational deployment is associated with compression of factory reception-yard turnaround time from 24.6 to 13.8 minutes and a 41% reduction in active fleet dispersion. Implications: The adaptive sigmoid switching mechanism dynamically shifts objective priorities between quality preservation and plant starvation avoidance during environmental shocks. For practitioners, the framework provides a real-time execution tool for synchronizing harvesting, loading, transportation, and factory reception under stochastic disturbances. For researchers, it demonstrates a scalable approach to time- based buffer management in temporal agro-industrial networks. Value: The scientific novelty lies in integrating adaptive DBR pull constraints, rolling MILP optimization, graph-based topological filtering, and physics- informed quality inputs into a unified cyber-physical synchronization framework. The proposed architecture transforms agricultural logistics from a rigid cost center into a resilience-oriented decision system without compromising grower equity or systemic transparency.
The rapid digital transformation of contemporary societies has significantly increased dependence on digital infrastructures while simultaneously exposing governments, institutions and citizens to cyber threats, disinformation and declining digital trust. The objective of this study is to examine how cyber governance mechanisms contribute to institutional resilience and the preservation of digital trust during geopolitical crises, using the 2022 Ukraine case as an illustrative example. The paper builds upon existing research concerning cybersecurity, cyber resilience, information disorder and digital governance, while extending recent discussions published in Smart Cities and Regional Development Journal on digital governance, resilient public administration and information security. A qualitative case study methodology was adopted, based on the analysis of publicly available governmental reports, cybersecurity assessments, policy documents and academic literature. The collected materials were examined using qualitative thematic analysis and triangulation of secondary sources in order to identify governance mechanisms influencing institutional resilience and information integrity. The findings indicate that resilience in digitally dependent societies cannot be explained solely through technological capabilities. Effective cyber resilience requires adaptive governance structures, cross-sectoral coordination, transparent strategic communication and trust-preserving institutional practices. The analysis further demonstrates that cyber incidents and disinformation campaigns reinforce one another, creating multidimensional governance challenges that may significantly undermine institutional legitimacy and public confidence when responses are fragmented or inconsistent. Conversely, coordinated governance frameworks substantially strengthen institutional resilience and improve the ability to maintain digital trust during crises. The study has practical implications for policymakers, public institutions and organizations responsible for cybersecurity, crisis management and digital governance by highlighting the importance of integrating cybersecurity policies with strategic communication and resilience planning. The main contribution of the paper lies in proposing a unified analytical perspective that combines cyber governance, disinformation and digital trust within a single governance framework, thereby extending current research on resilient digital ecosystems under conditions of geopolitical instability.
Objectives: Government and civil sector activities for supporting the cyber security during the full-scale invasion in Ukraine to rethink innovative national technologies and the latest achievements in AI, in the context of Ukrainian institutional capacity and supporting informational resilience in times of crisis. Prior work: The research summarizes Google’s report on the Munich Security Conference (2026), the official statistics on AI use in government services, a few cases of cyber-attack in Ukraine. Approach: Cyber security analized as a part of informational resilience and institutional capacity in preventing informational threats using official regulation, government strategy, business and society impact to disinformation counteraction. Results: The effectiveness of public policy in cyber security depends on institutional forms of state-business partnership, in particular cyber security clusters. As the networks of government, private, scientific and educational organizations they can concentrate resources, knowlege and technologies for innovative and decisions to respond quickly for informational and digital threats by society consolidation. Implications: Ukrainian experience in cyber security in times of crisis can be useful for both researchers and policy makers as the outputs for deepening theoretical analysis and developing public strategies and policies in shaping, preventing and managing modern informational threats. Value: The paper summarizes recent policies and cases of cyber security in a systematic, institutional form, including the government, public and private sectors partnership.
Objectives: This paper examines a central tension within Industry 4.0. Digitalisation can improve efficiency, monitoring capacity and decision making, but it also creates vulnerabilities linked to digital system failures, cyber incidents and algorithmic bias. The study analyses how these risks condition sustainable and resilient digital transformation in industrial environments and why they are relevant to smart cities. Prior work: The paper builds on research on Industry 4.0, digital transformation and productivity, together with studies on cyber physical systems, smart city security, Internet of Things (IoT) vulnerabilities, artificial intelligence (AI) enabled cyber defence and algorithmic governance. It connects these strands to move beyond technical performance and cybersecurity alone. Approach: The study follows a conceptual and analytical approach, supported by selected secondary evidence from Spain and the European context. Spain provides a contextual empirical anchor for illustrating the operational and social relevance of cyber risk, while the European framework supports the analysis of cybersecurity, algorithmic transparency, human oversight and AI governance. Results: The analysis shows that Industry 4.0 should not be assessed only through automation, efficiency or productivity gains. Its sustainability also depends on resilient digital infrastructures and on the governance conditions under which algorithmic systems are deployed. Under opacity, scale and limited accountability, such systems may amplify hidden biases and generate persistent harms in workforce management, supplier selection and investment allocation. Implications: The findings are relevant for researchers, policy makers and practitioners involved in smart industry and smart city strategies, as they stress the need to align innovation with resilience, accountability and organisational trust. Value: The paper contributes an integrated framework linking cyber resilience, algorithmic governance and social sustainability, showing that sustainable digital transformation requires both resilient infrastructures and accountable automated decisions.
