A Systematic Literature Review of Privacy Related to Sensing in Smart Buildings

The concept of smart building is based on the deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to develop various building applications and services. Aided by the proliferation of smart devices, research in building automation has grown significantly. Nevertheless, these smart devices are integrated with sensors that can collect and share sensitive data and private information related to the building occupants, exposing them to a variety of privacy threats. Although research efforts to promote the development of privacy-aware solutions for smart buildings have been on the rise, a comprehensive review that summarizes these studies is lacking in the literature. This paper provides an extensive review of the studies related to sensing in smart buildings. It highlights privacy issues connected to sensing in smart buildings, provides mitigation strategies that can be deployed to minimize occupants’ privacy invasions, and discusses future research directions towards realising privacy-aware smart buildings. To fulfill the aim of this study, five research questions are formulated, which enable systematic navigation through existing studies related to the topic. These research questions are directed to providing answers to privacy related to data leakage, privacy connected to sensor types, privacy related to different applications, privacy concern with sensor deployment locations and building types, privacy issues with data processing methods, and to highlight mitigation strategies for reducing privacy invasion. It further discusses the technical approaches, general principles, and design choices for privacy-aware applications which are relevant for guiding relevant stakeholders.