In the current global context of environmental degradation and resource constraints, the pursuit of sustainable development has become an imperative. One avenue that holds promise for achieving this objective is the application of digital technologies, which have the potential to decouple economic growth from its carbon footprint. However, it is crucial to ensure that these technologies are designed and governed in a prudent manner, with a strong alignment to environmental priorities. This study focuses on exploring the potential roles of blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) in supply chain coordination and impact mitigation. Furthermore, they have the capacity to incentivize recycling and circular business models, as well as facilitate carbon accounting and offsetting. To fully realize these benefits, it is essential to deploy these technologies within inclusive collaborative frameworks that take into consideration social and ecological considerations. The study also offers policy recommendations that highlight key leverage points for digital innovation, enabling countries to embark on smart and green industrial transformation pathways. By harnessing the potential of blockchain and AI in supply chains, governments can promote transparency, traceability, and accountability, thereby fostering sustainable practices and reducing environmental impacts. Incorporating blockchain and AI technologies into supply chain approaches leads to a substantial improvement in efficiency, as demonstrated by a numerical analysis. In conclusion, the integration of innovative digital technologies offers significant opportunities to optimize production systems and economic activity while prioritizing sustainability objectives for the betterment of society and the environment. These technologies have the potential to mitigate environmental externalities by addressing information imbalances within global supply chains. However, it is essential to prioritize inclusive governance that emphasizes democratic participation to mitigate any unintended negative consequences, especially for vulnerable communities. By ensuring inclusive decision-making processes, we can maximize the positive impact of these technologies while minimizing potential harm.
This paper analytically explores the value of blockchain technology in building consumer trust in recyclers. We focus on an e-commerce closed-loop supply chain composed of an online platform and a manufacturer. In the forward chain, the platform selects a reselling or marketplace model to sell products. In the reverse chain, the platform collects used products, and the unknown whereabouts of the used products will cause consumer mistrust and be detrimental to the corporate image. Blockchain technology can address these challenges by improving the visibility of the recycling chain. By constructing differential game models, we specify the conditions for blockchain implementation and explore its impact on the online sales model choice and the E-CLSC performance. The findings show that the manufacturer consistently benefits from blockchain technology, while the platform decides to adopt it when the long-term profits outweigh the initial investment costs. Interestingly, the sales model selection will not change with the advent of blockchain technology. We further show the benefits of blockchain-enabled recycling and provide tangible insights for related practitioners.
Ludmila Courtillat--Piazza, Thibault Pirson, Louis Golard, David Bol
Bitcoin mining is regularly pointed out for its massive energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions, hence contributing significantly to climate change. However, most studies ignore the environmental impacts of producing mining equipment, which is problematic given the short lifespan of such highly specific hardware. In this study, we perform a cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment (LCA) of dedicated Bitcoin mining equipment, considering their specific architecture. Our results show that the application-specific integrated circuit designed for Bitcoin mining is the main contributor to production-related impacts. This observation applies to most impact categories, including the global warming potential. In addition, this finding stresses out the necessity to carefully consider the specificity of the hardware. By comparing these results with several usage scenarios, we also demonstrate that the impacts of producing this type of equipment can be significant (up to 80% of the total life cycle impacts), depending on the sources of electricity supply for the use phase. Therefore, we highlight the need to consider the production phase when assessing the environmental impacts of Bitcoin mining hardware. To test the validity of our results, we use the Sphera LCA and ecoinvent databases for the background modeling of our system. Surprisingly, it leads to results with variations of up to 4 orders of magnitude for toxicity-related indicators, despite using the same foreground modeling. This database mismatch phenomenon, already identified in previous studies, calls for better understanding, consideration and discussion of environmental impacts in the field of electronics, going well beyond climate change indicators.
The construction industry is a significant contributor to global carbon emissions, primarily due to the generation of substantial construction and demolition waste. However, the current practices in construction and demolition waste management (CDWM) face various information management challenges that undermine their overall effectiveness. Correspondingly, this research proposes the integration of blockchain technology as a strategic solution to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of CDWM. Despite the potential of blockchain in revolutionizing CDWM, research in this area remains limited. To address such a gap, this study adopts a design science action research methodology to integrate the use of blockchain technology into CDWM. Specifically, this study has creatively introduced the blockchain-based data supply chain to address the principalâagent problem in CDWM and develop a novel blockchain-enabled framework for CDWM. Additionally, a six-layer system architecture for the blockchain-based CDWM information system has been developed. This integration holds the promise of streamlining and empowering CDWM processes and thereby improving the administration and regulation of CDWM. Notably, the utilization of blockchain technology also presents an innovative opportunity for carbon reduction and offsetting within the construction industry. This research makes a substantial contribution to the field by introducing a novel approach to address information management challenges in CDWM, thereby promoting sustainable practices in the construction industry.
The paper proposes a traceability framework based on methodological approach for the deployment of IOTA-Based Distributed Ledger in the mining industry, as a first step of certification and labelling of the sustainable material production. The methodology is evaluated in real-world implementation in scope of the DIG_IT project. The implementation provides significant amount of heterogeneous data originating from different processes and sources during the operation in mines, such as vehicles operations, mining and raw material extraction, workers physical parameters, environmental parameters, sensors (field, biometric, assets), market (supply chains, commodity prices), weather data, etc. Most of these datasets, especially the data about the emission, needs integrity and the ability to be audited by the public community, government and the stakeholders. The methodology for establishing the transparency for the mining operations, the requirements, technical architecture, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) assessment, Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) infrastructure, as well as end-to-end traceability, are proposed and evaluated with the actual deployment. The approach advocates end to end security for the increased traceability and data integrity based on Distributed Ledger Technology. Namely, W3C Decentralised Identities and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) should be deployed from the data source to the cloud and anchored onto the Blockchain. The approach showed promising results with the regulations compliance made possible, making the data available and advertised publicly for the emission compliance.
Abstract The built environment fundamentally suffers from organisational fragmentation in various aspects, such as data flow, finance, and supply chains. Blockchain technology can be considered a transformative solution to the inherent fragmentation of this industry. This chapter first defines the basics of blockchain technology to show how a peer-to-peer network could enable a decentralised, traceable, and immutable information system across the life cycles of built assets. Then, an overview of blockchain literature within the context of a circular economy, with real-life examples and the current state of blockchain adoption in the circular built environment, is presented, and the role that this technology plays in addressing certain circular strategies is discussed. Afterward, implementation challenges and incentives are identified to set realistic expectations regarding the capabilities of blockchain technologies. Emerging concepts within blockchain technologies are then presented to give insights into prospects beyond current literature and use cases in the circular built environment. Finally, the future of blockchain technology in a circular built environment is discussed to present the applicability of blockchain and its possible integration with other emerging digitalisation tools, such as building information modelling (BIM) and material passports, in wider domains of circular, smart cities and communities.
In today's age of product liability, physical warranties always pose a risk. It presents challenges such as fraud, card balance, and inability to identify the correct product and ownership. This project offers a new solution for the quality problem by drawing warranty cards on the blockchain. The main responsibilities of this project include converting traditional tokens into non-fungible tokens (NFTs) based on the flexible warranty dates of the wide range of products. Doing this verifies the authenticity and ownership of the product and eliminates the possibility of a fake or duplicate warranty. In addition, the automated burn bot in the system ensures that the card becomes invalid after the warranty period expires, to ensure the accuracy of the warranty conditions. One of the best features of this blockchain-based approach is that the ownership of the warranty can be switched easily to the new customer by just transferring the NFT to the wallet linked to that customer. The project is an exemplary example of how blockchain technology can transform traditional processes, improve security, increase confidence in defence and ultimately deliver benefits for customers and products.
This study presents a comprehensive framework for optimizing gas fees in decentralized finance (DeFi) pools on the Ethereum blockchain, aimed at enhancing both transaction efficiency and security. The proposed Theory of Gas Fee Minimization strategically optimizes parameters such as the initial token supply, transaction volumes, and gas fees to achieve significant cost reductions and increased transaction throughput. Our computational simulations demonstrate that by addressing factors like market volatility, network congestion, and impact cost factors, the framework effectively minimizes gas fees while reducing the profitability of sandwich attacks, thereby enhancing the security of DeFi ecosystems. The introduction of the Gas Cost Surface provides a novel approach to dynamically managing gas fees, offering insights into the complex interactions between swap amounts and market volatility. This research underscores the importance of rigorous optimization techniques in DeFi protocol design, contributing to the development of more efficient, secure, and user-friendly decentralized financial systems. The findings provide valuable guidance for developers, researchers, and stakeholders seeking to improve the performance and resilience of DeFi platforms, setting new standards for efficiency and security in the blockchain ecosystem.
Dec 1, 2023¡International journal of intelligent computing and information sciences/International Journal of Intelligent Computing and Information Sciences
Mohamed A. Abo-Soliman, Eman shaaban, Mirvat Al-Qutt, Karim Emara
The use of distributed ledger technology for industrial IoT devices is increasing recently to ensure network security and data protection. Factories and manufacturing plants inclined lately to deploy both Industrial IoT and DLT applications in order to enable autonomous secure operations. IoT helps in simplifying business processes, improving userâs experience and leading to better cost efficiencies, while DLT ensures security, transparency and trust. DLT-based IoT supports secure automation for industrial systems and fosters transformation into the industry 4 age. However, DLT still faces several challenges such as scalability, high cost and security. Moreover, there is no clear understanding about DLT-IoT architecture by a wide range of the industrial community. This work introduces DLT as a major key component of industrial IoT systems that benefits the industry with high level of protection and trust. It also surveys different DLT consensus with regard to industry in order to construct a comparative analysis between the most common algorithms. The study concludes by a selection criteria chart for building integrated DLT-IoT solution suitable for different types of businesses.
Katarzyna BuĹkowska, Magdalena ZieliĹska, Maciej BuĹkowski
Implementing blockchain technology in waste management is a novel approach to environmental sustainability and accountability challenges in our modern world. Blockchain, a technology that enables decentralized and immutable ledgers, is now being re-imagined as a tool to revolutionize waste management. This innovative approach aims to improve waste management transparency, traceability, and efficiency, resulting in significant environmental and economic benefits. In traditional waste management systems, the tracking and disposal of waste materials are not transparent and can be vulnerable to fraud, mismanagement, and inefficiency. Blockchain technology provides a secure and transparent platform for recording every step in the waste management lifecycle, from waste generation to collection, transportation, recycling, or disposal. Every transaction in the blockchain is recorded in a tamper-proof manner, enabling real-time monitoring and verification of waste-related data. This paper introduces the concept of using blockchain technology in waste management. The main goal of this work is to show the implementation of blockchain technology in an existing waste management company, using smart contracts in the recycling process to provide transparency. Also, the digital product passport was redefined in terms of circular economy and waste recycling.
Morteza Ghobakhloo, Mohammad Iranmanesh, Muhammad Shujaat Mubarik, Muhammad Faraz Mubarak ¡ 6 authors
Abstract Blockchain technology is a core technology expected to play a highly instrumental role in competing with socioenvironmental challenges. The literature hypothesizes various blockchain functions for building a sustainable business ecosystem. This study unifies these diverse perspectives into an interpretive strategy roadmap that provides a holistic overview of how blockchain should be leveraged to deliver sustainability functions optimally. The study first identified the sustainability functions of blockchain through a contentâcentric literature review. The study applied interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and drew on experts' opinions to model how and in which order blockchain delivers these sustainability functions. The study further drew on the ISM output and interpretive logicâknowledge base to develop the promised roadmap. Results revealed that blockchain promotes a decentralized decision system that facilitates automation and realâtime information sharing (RIS) across supply chains. Blockchain introduces traceability and transparency into supply chain operations. These conditions offer monitoring of business operations and the development of trust across valueâchain stakeholders. These driver functions lead to value chain optimization and circularity integration into business and supply chain operations. When these necessary functional conditions are met, businesses can further draw on blockchain to promote economic and environmental aspects of sustainability through more complex functions enabling resource efficiency, cost reduction, pollution prevention, and higher profit margins. The order in which businesses can leverage these functions would define blockchain sustainability performance. Each function is uniquely valuable to sustainability, and none of them can be overlooked.
Cristina Regueiro, Aitor Gómez-Goiri, N. A. Pedrosa, Christos Semertzidis ¡ 6 authors
As the global population continues to grow, the enormous stress on our environment and resources is becoming impossible to ignore. A focus on producing and consuming as cheap as possible has created an economy in which objects are briefly used and then discarded as waste, featuring a linear lifecycle that creates an enormous amount of waste. The alternative to the linear economy "take-make-waste" is called the âcircular economyâ. Under this paradigm, materials are recycled to build new products or components that are designed and built to promote their reuse and refurbishment. This assures the continuous (re-)exploitation of existing resources, reducing the extraction of new raw materials. However, customers often reject these reused or refurbished products under the suspicion that they do not meet the same usability, safety, or performance levels of new products. In this sense, trustworthy records of historical details of refurbished products could increase consumersâ confidence in products and components of the "circular economy", prioritizing trustworthiness, reliability, and transparency. This work presents a new certification tool based on blockchain technology to guarantee trusted, accurate, transparent and traceable lifecycle information of products and their components and to generate trustworthy certificates to probe refurbished product historical details. This tool aims to enhance refurbished product visibility by creating the basis for making the circular economy a reality in any domain.
The building industry is one of the most resource-intensive sectors in industrialized countries, requiring a shift from a linear to a more sustainable circular economic model. Nevertheless, there are several major challenges, such as the management of information regarding used materials and products, the lack of cross-sector documentation tools, and sales operations for implementing a dynamic circular economy in the building industry. To overcome these challenges, blockchain technology for documentation, tracing used materials and products, and the use of multi-criteria decision-making approaches for the ranking and selection of optimal used materials and products have emerged as crucial facilitators, with the potential to address the technological, organizational, environmental, and economic requirements. The purpose of this study is to develop a theoretical framework of a digital platform ecosystem for implementing a dynamic circular economy in the building industry through the integration of blockchain technology and a multi-criteria decision-making approach built upon their synergy. The priority order of two alternatives of used materials and products was determined according to the AHP method, leading to selection of the most sustainable alternative. This research study contributes to dynamic circular economies by (1) facilitating cross-sector information transparency and the tracing of used materials and products from their sources to their end-of-life stages and through (2) the ranking and selection of used materials and products based on their overall properties.
The growing demand for batteries, in particular lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, brings attention to new challenging issues such as second-life for batteries and tracking and recycling of critical raw materials. This study suggests a solution to the problem of tracking batteries along the supply chain and their recycling process. The use of nested tokens allows battery transactions to be tracked and information about raw materials inside them to be retrieved with an easy accounting of those. The joint use of blockchain and distributed data storage solutions like IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) guarantees the availability, integrity and non-repudiation of the data and allows interoperation with digital twin models. A smart contract system allows each actor of the business model to carry out only the operations for which he is authorized through the use of rules and certifications issued by a regulator. A prototype was realized and a cost analysis of used gas and the equivalent costs in USD was carried out for the Ethereum and Polygon blockchain networks.
The current state of recycling systems is marked by significant impediments to their efficacy. A lack of transparency often pervades these systems, which may result in an increased likelihood of fraudulent and corrupt activity. Additionally, traceability pertaining to recycled materials frequently proves inadequate. Together, these inefficiencies in the collection and processing of recyclables can lead to higher costs and environmental impact. Furthermore, low incentives may deter individuals and businesses from participating in recycling initiatives. Certain recycling systems may also suffer from limited compatibility with specific materials, further reducing their effectiveness. To address these challenges, we propose a permissioned Ethereum blockchain-based system that aims to incentivise and encourage recycling practices in a transparent and secure manner. The platformâs modular and multi-layered design makes it adaptable to various recycling scenarios, allowing it to handle diverse types of recyclable materials. Automated and streamlined recycling processes are achieved through the use of smart contracts. The proposed system offers a secure, transparent, and efficient platform for the management of recycling processes, promoting environmentally responsible behaviour towards a circular economy. Potential applications for the system include waste disposal and recycling management for smart cities, waste management for organisations, and tracking and management of operations for recycling companies. The platform is highly versatile and can accommodate various use cases in the recycling industry, including those involving traceable and untraceable materials, as well as individual and corporate use cases.
Assia Chadly, Haya R. Hasan, Karim Moawad, Khaled Salah ¡ 6 authors
The supply chain of rare earth metals plays a crucial role in producing thin-film solar photovoltaics (PVs), which are vital for renewable energy generation. However, this supply chain is often characterized by opacity, inefficiencies, and security concerns especially since those rare earth metals come from mainly one supplier, China. Also, the solar PVsâ certificates are purely technical and fail to consider the ethical sourcing and sustainable supply chain management conditions of mining. The working conditions of the miners are often neglected and are least prioritized. In this paper, a blockchain-based solution was proposed to leverage the intrinsic decentralized blockchain features including traceability, transparency, non-repudiation, and accountability in the supply chain of thin-film solar PVs, to safeguard not only the technical conditions of the mined products but also the ethical conditions of the workers during mining. Ethical mines must uphold good safety standards, pay their workers a fair wage, adhere to working hours, and legal working age. The solution paves the way to ethical mining where the certification of the PVs is not granted unless both technical and ethical conditions are met. The supply chain of thin-film PVs that goes from mining the rare earth metals in China, where more than 70% of the rare earth metals used are extracted from, to the disposal at the end-of-life (EOL) of the PVs was presented. Smart contracts to enable the on-chain traceability of the registration, manufacturing, assessment, delivery, and disposal of PVs were developed. The solution exploits the tamper-proof logs of the distributed ledger to ensure accountability and record transactions as part of the data provenance. The proposed solution includes a system design with sequence diagrams, smart contracts with algorithms, and a testing and analysis section.
As electric vehicles become more popular, battery swap stations are gaining attention as a new type of charging facility. However, the charging process for electric vehicles involves privacy information such as user location and charging mode, which can be easily stolen or leaked, posing security risks and personal privacy concerns for users. Therefore, protecting the privacy of electric vehicle battery swap station users has become an important issue. This paper aims to study a privacy protection system for electric vehicle battery swap stations using blockchain technology. First, the basic principles and application scenarios of blockchain technology are introduced. Second, potential privacy leaks in electric vehicle battery swap stations are analysed, and a privacy protection scheme based on blockchain is proposed, including anonymous identity authentication, zero-knowledge proof, and encrypted communication. Third, a blockchain-based privacy protection system for electric vehicle battery swap stations is designed and implemented, and its performance is experimentally evaluated and compared with traditional privacy protection schemes in terms of security and efficiency. This paper demonstrates that the blockchain-based privacy protection scheme for electric vehicle battery swap stations possesses high levels of security and reliability, effectively safeguarding users' privacy information. Furthermore, this scheme exhibits promising application prospects and potential for widespread adoption. With the continuous development and utilization of blockchain technology, the privacy protection scheme for electric vehicle battery swap stations using blockchain is expected to provide users with more secure, reliable, and convenient charging services.
Swati Bula Patil, Snehal Rahul Rathi, Ganesh C. Shelke, Shalini Vaibhav Wankhede ¡ 7 authors
In recent times, there has been a rampant proliferation of counterfeit products that has left a trail of devastation in the manufacturing sectors. The repercussions of this extend to companies, impacting their brand reputation, revenue streams and overall profitability. Industries like agriculture, banking, electronics, and high-value deliveries uses the emergence of blockchain technology as a powerful tool to discern between authentic and counterfeit items. Its potential as a means to curtail the influx of fake products in the market is substantial. Blockchain technology, at its core, operates as a decentralized and distributed digital ledger system, meticulously recording transactions within interconnected blocks across multiple databases. The inherent security of this technology ensures the immutability of these blocks, rendering them invulnerable to alteration or hacking. By leveraging blockchain technology, consumers can independently verify the authenticity of a product, eliminating the need for reliance on third-party intermediaries. Incorporating recent technological advancements, the utilization of Quick Response (QR) codes offers a robust approach to combat the proliferation of counterfeit goods. The integration of blockchain technology with QR codes serves as a means to uphold the integrity of products. This innovative system securely stores product details and unique codes in the form of blocks, where QR codes play a pivotal role in collecting and matching these unique codes with entries in the blockchain database. If the QR code matches with entries in the database, the user receives a confirmation of the product's authenticity; otherwise, an alert is triggered, signaling the presence of a counterfeit product.
Quality management (QM) of additive manufacturing (AM) processes is currently immature in terms of transparency, traceability and security. In particular, quality-relevant documents are not documented and communicated in a traceable and transparent manner, which often leads to quality deficiencies. However, combining AM with blockchain technology can enable a solution that maps the AM value chain digitally, transparently, traceably and securely in a part record. In this work, a quality assurance (QA) concept for the metal-based material extrusion (MEX) process is developed that enables a digital representation of the value chain in the form of an AM part record. The decentralized solution presented in this work uses an architecture consisting of a web application for data acquisition, a decentralized storage solution for storing larger amounts of data, a smart contract for capturing manufacturing events and the Ethereum blockchain for transparent, secure and traceable storage of blockchain data. The AM part record enables traceable and constantly available digital documentation of quality information. The cost-effectiveness of the solution is also shown in a demonstration study. The research results highlight the benefits of a blockchain-based AM part record for digital manufacturing documentation and represent an efficient alternative or extension to existing QM and QA solutions in AM.
Open access
Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing Technologies
Rahim Zahedi, Alireza Aslani, Mohammad Ali Nasle Seraji
An unprecedented emergence has occurred for the cryptocurrencies among enterprises, customers, and investors as a result of the growing number of internet connections worldwide. The most popular cryptocurrency is Bitcoin representing the rise of digital payment systems. Though, harsh criticism has been also created for cryptocurrencies about their environmental sustainability and power consumption, decelerating the acceptance of bitcoin by consumer as a means of payment. The ecological impact or footprint of a process is determined mainly through life-cycle-assessment (LCA) quantifying all material flowsâ inputs and outputs for a process or product and their effect on the environment. This study provides LCA-based framework to show the environmental impacts of Bitcoin mining from top ten miner countries (China, USA, Kazakhstan, Russia, Iran, Malaysia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Norway). The results show that with the share of 53.3% of the worldâs mining, China has the most negative environmental impact specially in marine ecotoxicity with 26.8 kg 1,4-DCB and human health with 0.0043 DALY but with the equal mining ratio Germany and Kazakhstan have the most negative environmental impacts.
Zhu-Jun Wang, ZhenâSong Chen, Lu Xiao, Qin Su ¡ 6 authors
Industry 5.0 has introduced a novel interpretation of sustainable supply chains (SSCs) that emphasizes the importance of building a transparent and trustworthy network that can be continuously monitored and controlled through stakeholder collaboration as well as the use of advanced, intelligent machinery. The ultimate goal of SSCs is to meet specific economic, social, and environmental standards. The implementation of blockchain technology can significantly improve the reliability, efficiency, and security of the information exchanged among stakeholders in SSCs. However, these stakeholders inevitably possess varying informational advantages and exhibit divergent perspectives regarding the adoption of blockchain technology. This paper thus aims to examine the impediments to the adoption of blockchain technology in the context of SSCs with the goal of promoting blockchain adoption. To achieve this objective, this study analyzes the barriers to blockchain adoption from the perspectives of various stakeholders in SSCs and constructs a barrier severity assessment model that utilizes group decision-making methods to integrate all stakeholdersâ attitudes. This study employs the PEEST (political, economic, environmental, social, and technological) framework to identify 27 barriers to the adoption of blockchain technology. Subsequently, an expertise-based group decision-making approach is used to quantify the prominence of various barriers according to various types of stakeholders. The results indicate that the five most intense barriers are storage constraints, insufficient economic incentives, high integration costs, a lack of functional appeal, and ambiguity regarding data disclosure and public data management regulations. This research makes novel theoretical and practical contributions, as it takes an empirical and all-encompassing approach to identifying obstacles to the adoption of blockchain technology and provides valuable insights for policymakers and practitioners to reference in overcoming these obstacles.
This paper analyzes the current status of the engineering supervision process in construction and infrastructure projects in China. It discusses the existing problems, such as low efficiency of supervision, distorted monitoring data, resource waste, and environmental damage. Based on extensive literature research and combining the consensus mechanism, ECDSA encryption algorithm and so on, the paper proposes the idea of integrating blockchain technology with the engineering supervision process. This includes the decision of blockchain type, the use of digital signature technology to implement responsibility, and the construction of a hybrid blockchain system using the blockchain's consensus mechanism. The paper presents the general design, the design of the system structures, and the design of modules of the system. Through this system, project participants can verify their identities and share sensitive information confidentially, thereby improving the efficiency of supervision work and preventing data forgery, reducing resource waste, decreasing carbon emissions, and minimizing environmental damage.