BlockAgro: Towards Blockchain assisted IoST Framework for Agricultural Sector

Abstract

Blockchain and Internet of Spatial Things (IoST) integration in smart agricultural systems employing Geographical Information System (GIS) provides agricultural systems with decentralized, trustworthy, secure, dependable, scalable, traceable, and transparent services. Most previous research uses IoT to automate agricultural systems without addressing security, scalability, single-point failure, access control, trust, and transparency concerns. With an expanded marketplace, distributors, producers, buyers, sellers, and other agricultural users, the previously proposed cloud-based and centralized agricultural systems faced limits in data collection, sharing, management, processing, storing, availability, security, auditability, and stability. To address the challenges that exist in IoST agricultural systems, we propose BlockAgro, a Blockchain-assisted IoST framework for the agricultural sector, with a three-tier architecture, namely an IoST device layer, a fog layer, and a cloud layer, to address the issues in IoT agricultural systems. Additionally, it provides data analysis, visualization, processing, filtration, and temporary storage of gathered IoST data at the nearest fog nodes to reduce cloud infrastructure overhead. Moreover, the experimental findings of the proposed framework ensure the access control mechanism for IoST devices, efficiency measurement metrics, and data availability in a decentralized agricultural platform.