Designing a Scalable Blockchain-Based Framework for Secure Smart City Infrastructure Management

Abstract

Smart cities require the efficient and secure integration of key infrastructure domains such as water, energy, transportation, smart lighting and waste management deploying a myriad of data-generating IoT sensors and devices. Current management systems feature single points of failure, lack of auditability, insufficient privacy protection and lack of scalability as IoT nodes increase in density. In this paper, we present SmartChain, a three-tier multilayered blockchain based architecture that incorporates a permissioned distributed ledger, an AIbased anomaly detection module (ADM) and a dual-layered privacy preservation approach that combines Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) and Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (CP-ABE). SmartChain is tested on a large dataset - 2000 timestamped transactions involving Smart Cities’ five infrastructure types across several zones of a city. The results show a mean throughput of 3,421 transactions per second (TPS), a mean transaction latency of 3,847 milliseconds and a mean privacy score of 82.4 out of 100. The machine learning based anomaly module produces an F1-Score of over 97% and an AUROC score of 0.991 with Random Forest as the classifier. Benchmarking against Hyperledger Fabric 2.5, Ethereum 2.0 and the IOTA Tangle demonstrate the scalability, security, privacy and efficiency of SmartChain. This research renders SmartChain a practical production-level platform for management of new smart city infrastructure.