ABSTRACT The rapid evolution of smart cities has introduced complex cybersecurity challenges due to the integration of interconnected systems and the emergence of new technologies. Traditional security mechanisms are increasingly inadequate against sophisticated cyber threats, especially those posed by quantum computing. This research presents a novel AI‐driven cyber‐physical security framework, reinforced with quantum encryption, designed to protect critical smart city infrastructures. The framework applies AI, with the help of quantum encryption, to protect smart city networks, making its use based on machine learning and deep learning to identify abnormal behavior, anticipate malicious behavior, and react to threats quickly. It uses quantum key distribution (QKD) and post‐quantum cryptographic (PQC) algorithms to protect both classical and quantum attacks on exchanges of data. The multi‐layer security architecture focuses on the network, device, and at but provides security on the edge of the urban environments, such as smart grids, transportation, public services, and medical networks. Tests on public datasets and quantum tools showed that the framework had 98.7% threat detection, low false positives, and consumed minimum resources when encrypting data, making it the best fit in real‐world scenarios such as accidents and disasters. Further testing proved its flexibility and speed, thus it is able to suit current and future smart cities. The framework ensures a flexible protection against new threats in both cyber and physical space by integrating AI and quantum technologies, thus demonstrating the necessity of secure and low‐overhead urban digital systems capable of adapting to emerging technologies.
Parmar et al. (Thu,) studied this question.