Blockchain Papers

Ferdınando Chıacchıo, Diego D’Urso, Lucio Compagno, Marcello Chiarenza · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Julian Kolb, Luc Becker, Marcus Fischer, Axel Winkelmann

Disruptive technologies, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, or the blockchain, have the potential to transform entire industries as previous publications have outlined. They especially offer new opportunities to improve existing processes in the dimensions of performance, cost, and quality. Despite a continuously growing number of contributions, research and practice lack an adequate understanding about how blockchain can be used to achieve these benefits. Against this backdrop, this paper presents the current state of blockchain research in the field of enterprise procurement and outlines several avenues for future research. Therefore, we define relevant processes and functions to build a research framework for structuring and categorizing the current body of literature. Our results suggest that previous work mostly focuses on blockchain application scenarios with a focus on communication and transaction, while widely neglecting numerous fields, such as data integrity and data access.

Akash Dutt Dubey, Preyas Hanche, Ayush Falor

No abstract is available for this record.

Gurudutt Nayak, Amol S. Dhaigude

This paper proposes a conceptual model of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) in small and medium enterprises (SME) using blockchain technology (BT). With growing focus on sustainable business process, research on SSCM is gaining prominence. BT, being a disruptive technology, has potential to impact the SSCM. Using the extant literature, the antecedents of SSCM using BT have been identified. Multiple-criteria decision-making has been deployed to develop the conceptual model. Various managerial and theoretical implications along with scope for future research have been discussed.

Nir Kshetri, Elena Loukoianova

Reports on how blockchain can impact industries. IN 2009, Toyota announced a recall of four million vehicles due to faulty gas pedals.1 The recall cost an estimated US$2 billion. The company had received pedals from many suppliers. It lacked mechanisms to track the suppliers that were responsible for the faulty pedals. There was, thus, no way to know which cars had the defective pedals. Similar problems are found in the food industry. Blockchain has the potential to provide solutions to problems such as mentioned above by addressing visibility and traceability challenges. Blockchain technology enables companies to record every event or transaction within a supply chain (SC) on a distributed ledger, which is shared among all participants, making it secure, immutable, and irrevocable. It makes it possible to deal with a crisis in a targeted way after such a crisis is discovered and provides distributed trust. Blockchain can facilitate handling and dealing with crisis situations such as product recalls due to faulty parts or security vulnerabilities. Blockchain’s public availability means that it is possible to trace back every product to the origin of the raw materials, and transactions can be linked to identify users of vulnerable parts and devices. Also, blockchain can reduce the costs of a supply chain.

Ju Myung Song, Jongwook Sung, Taeho Park

Blockchain has been emerged as a promising technology for a traceability system in industry. It can also be applied to many functions of a Supply Chain Management (SCM) system, such as logistics, quality assurance, inventory management, and forecasting. One of the most important functions of the SCM is to improve the transparency, traceability and auditability of materials flow throughout the supply chain from suppliers, manufacturing facilities, warehouses/distribution centers, to customers. This research especially focuses on the impact of blockchain on supply chain traceability through the current industry applications, and its future direction.

Nikhil Vadgama

No abstract is available for this record.

Gabriella M. Hastig, ManMohan S. Sodhi

We seek to guide operations management (OM) research on the implementation of supply chain traceability systems by identifying business requirements and the factors critical to successful implementation. We first motivate the need for implementing traceability systems in two very different industries—cobalt mining and pharmaceuticals—and present business requirements and critical success factors for implementation. Next, we describe how we carried out thematic analysis of practitioner and scholarly articles on implementing blockchain for supply chain traceability. Finally, we present our results pertaining to the needs of different stakeholders such as suppliers, consumers, and regulators. The business requirements for traceability systems are curbing illegal practices; improving sustainability performance; increasing operational efficiency; enhancing supply‐chain coordination; and sensing market trends. Critical success factors for implementation are companies’ capabilities; collaboration; technology maturity; supply chain practices; leadership; and governance of the traceability efforts. These findings provide a nascent measurement model for empirical work and a foundation for descriptive and normative research on blockchain applications for supply chain traceability.

Martin Westerkamp, Friedhelm Victor, Axel Küpper

Growing consumer awareness as well as manufacturers' internal quality\nrequirements lead to novel demands on supply chain traceability. Existing\ncentralized solutions suffer from isolated data storage and lacking trust when\nmultiple parties are involved. Decentralized blockchain-based approaches\nattempt to overcome these shortcomings by creating digital representations of\nphysical goods to facilitate tracking across multiple entities. However, they\ncurrently do not capture the transformation of goods in manufacturing\nprocesses. Therefore, the relation between ingredients and product is lost,\nlimiting the ability to trace a product's provenance. We propose a\nblockchain-based supply chain traceability system using smart contracts. In\nsuch contracts, manufacturers define the composition of products in the form of\nrecipes. Each ingredient of the recipe is a non-fungible token that corresponds\nto a batch of physical goods. When the recipe is applied, its ingredients are\nconsumed and a new token is produced. This mechanism preserves the traceability\nof product transformations. The system is implemented for the Ethereum Virtual\nMachine and is applicable to any blockchain configuration that supports it. Our\nevaluation reveals that the gas costs scale linearly with the number of\nproducts considered in the system. This leads to the conclusion that the\nsolution can handle complex use cases.\n

Mahtab Kouhizadeh, Joseph Sarkis

Blockchain technology is an inchoate technology whose current popularity is peaking. Some of the most pervasive blockchain technology use cases exist for supply chains. Sustainable, and especially green, supply chains can benefit from blockchain technology, but there are also caveats. The sustainability and environmental management research and academic literature is only starting to investigate this emergent field. This paper seeks to help advance the discussion and motivate additional practice and research related to green supply chains and blockchain technology. This viewpoint paper provides insight into some of the main dimensions of blockchain technology, an overview of the use cases and issues, and some general research areas for further investigation.

Simone Figorilli, Francesca Antonucci, Corrado Costa, Federico Pallottino · 12 authors

This is the first work to introduce the use of blockchain technology for the electronic traceability of wood from standing tree to final user. Infotracing integrates the information related to the product quality with those related to the traceability [physical and digital documents (Radio Frequency IDentification-RFID-architecture)] within an online information system whose steps (transactions) can be made safe to evidence of alteration through the blockchain. This is a decentralized and distributed ledger that keeps records of digital transactions in such a way that makes them accessible and visible to multiple participants in a network while keeping them secure without the need of a centralized certification organism. This work implements a blockchain architecture within the wood chain electronic traceability. The infotracing system is based on RFID sensors and open source technology. The entire forest wood supply chain was simulated from standing trees to the final product passing through tree cutting and sawmill process. Different kinds of Internet of Things (IoT) open source devices and tags were used, and a specific app aiming the forest operations was engineered to collect and store in a centralized database information (e.g., species, date, position, dendrometric and commercial information).

Xiaoli Wang, Yun Liu, Yanbing Ju

In many countries, sustainable public procurement is a powerful tool to reflect on national strategic intentions and promote scientific and technological innovation. Based on the perspective of an institutional structure, we filtered out the core policies. Using policy bibliometrics, we analyzed Chinese public procurement policies on promoting scientific and technological innovation, revealed policy-making characteristics, and concluded that the Ministry of Finance should appropriately decentralize the policy-making work to other relevant agencies of the State Council. This article compares the main policy tools from four dimensions in China, the U.S., the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, France, and South Korea. We issued these pertinent strategies: establishing the vendor database for small and medium enterprises, developing a grade system and the post-evaluation system, formulating detailed implementation methods for high-tech products (services), and carrying out classification management for imported products. For sustainable public procurement policies on promoting scientific and technological innovation, this article provides an effective reference to organize the agencies and formulate the detail measures. This article’s research framework could be applied to analyze other industry policies.

Seán Lynch

OpenLitterMap rewards users with Littercoin for producing open data on litter. Open data on the geospatial characteristics of litter provide means of invoking and evaluating responses to plastic pollution. OpenLitterMap currently works as a web app on all devices with native mobile apps in development. The stack includes the integration of the Laravel PHP Framework on the backend; Vue for frontend reactivity; NativeScript-Vue for mobile apps; Bulma for CSS; Leaflet for web-mapping; Turf.js for geospatial analysis; the Ethereum Blockchain for tokenization; Stripe; ChartJS; AWS; and more. Anywhere from a single cigarette butt to the contents of an entire beach or street clean can be logged in a single geotagged photo. Alternatively, a simple index may be used if litter is incalculable. The open data includes an increasing 100+ pre-defined types of litter; 20+ corporate brands; verification status; coordinates; timestamp; phone model; the latest OpenStreetMap address at each location; and the litter presence as a Boolean. To date, 100% of all submitted data (~ 8200 photos, ~ 28,000 litter from over 150 contributors) has been manually verified which is being used to develop machine learning algorithms.

Bailu Fu, Zhan Shu, Xiaogang Liu

Motivated by the recent blockchain technology originally built for bitcoin transactions, various industries are exploring the opportunities to redefine their existing operational systems. In this study, an innovative environmentally sustainable solution is proposed for the fashion apparel manufacturing industry (FAMI), which is energized by blockchain. Incorporating the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), and a novel “emission link” system, the proposed framework exposes carbon emission to the public and establishes a feature to reduce the emissions for all key steps of clothing making. Fully compatible with Industry 4.0, blockchain provides decentralization, transparency, automation, and immutability characteristics to the proposed framework. Specifically, the blockchain supported ETS framework, the carbon emissions of clothing manufacturing life cycle, and the emission link powered procedures are introduced in detail. A case study is provided to demonstrate the carbon emission evaluation procedure. Finally, a multi-criteria evaluation is performed to demonstrate the benefits and drawbacks of the proposed system.

Jie Xiao, Jungang Lou, Jianhui Jiang, Xiaoxin Li · 6 authors

Currently, few works focus on the reliability of the blockchain architecture at the circuit level, which makes its security and privacy vulnerable to hardware errors. To mitigate the hazard, through an iterative probabilistic transfer matrix model coded by a binary-decimal mechanism, a reliability-based evaluation method for the importance of circuit units is proposed in this paper. First, the method calculates the output reliabilities in any leads by the iterative probabilistic transfer matrix model and obtains the reliability gradient for the circuit units based on the gradient and barrel theory. Second, it sorts the importance of the circuit units based on their obtained reliability gradients. Third, combining the sensitized path coverage rate and the sequence comparison, the method constructs an importance-based sorting algorithm for the circuit units with the same reliability gradients. Finally, it reinforces the importance circuit units based on the sorting results to improve the security and privacy for the blockchain architecture at the hardware level. Theoretical analysis and experimental results indicate that the proposed method can be applied to measure the importance of circuit units at several abstract levels, with high precision and small time-space complexity, and systems can thus achieve a great reliability improvement at a small cost.

Olga Jensen

Den europeiska energisektorn genomgår numera en viktig övergång från en centraliserad elkraftförsörjning till distribuerad elproduktion från förnybara källor. Dessutom leder utfasningen av fossila bränslen till en ökning av antalet elfordon (här EV). Höga penetrationsnivåer för både EV och förnybara energin på distributionsnivån kan orsaka ytterligare belastning på elnätet, vilket kan leda till avbrott i strömförsörjningen och försämring av strömkvaliteten. I detta examensarbete undersöktes möjligheterna att lösa detta problem i Tyskland. Den föreslagna lösningen är ett förvaltningssystem för EV-laddning och lokal förnybar elproduktion/-koppling i realtid. Tre användningsfall utvecklades för att analysera denna lösning. Det första användningsfallet ”hyresgästernas el” är baserat på den nya tyska förordningen som infördes 2017 och främjar att använda solenergi ”bakom” elmätaren i flerbostadshyrehus. I detta fall, genom att erbjuda en EV-laddningstjänst, kan hyresvärden uppnå en högre konsumtionsnivå under solskenstimmarna när hyresgästerna är på jobbet, och därmed få en bättre ersättning. Betalningsperioden för en 11 kW laddsstation, som skulle användas tillsammans med en PV av 26 kWp, beräknades vara cirka 5 år om laddstationen är upptagen 30-40 % av den möjliga dagsljustiden. Om laddstationenen har installerats på grund av andra ändamål kan ”hyresgästernas el”-modellen bli en extra inkomstkälla. De andra två användningsfallen beror på möiligheten att införa en ”minskad elnätavgift”. Här måste man nämna att insatser att föra EV-laddningen på tid och plats för förnybar elproduktion måste motiveras. Numera är elpriset fast i Tyskland för småförbrukare som betyder att det inte finns någon orsak för en beteendeförändring av EV-förare. En minskad elnätsavgift kunde bli en åtgärd för att främja ”EV-laddning + lokal förnybar elproduktion”-kopplingen; den kan beviljas av en distributionssystemoperatör (DSO) ifall denna EV-laddning skulle hjälpa att undvika stockningar och avkortning i elnätet. Det andra användningsfallet innebär att införa en sådan minskad elnätavgift för EV-laddning med lokal sol- (PV) eller vindel, som inför dynamisk prissättning. I det här fallet ska lokala elproducenter behöva säjla el till lokala laddstationer på ett peer-to-peer (P2P) sätt. Enligt gällande regelverk är ren P2P-handel inte möjlig; den skulle behöva inrättning av lokala energimarknader och ytterligare balansering. Vad man kan göra kallas direktmarknadsföring, vilket är en elmarknadsmodell som utförs av en aggregator. Användningen av blockchain som ett verktyg skulle bli välgörande för båda fallen eftersom det skulle tilllåta realtids - främja ”EV-laddning + lokal förnybar elproduktion”-kopplingen med dynamisk prissättning. Ifall man gör P2P-handel möjligt, skulle blockchain också bli användbar för betalningar, medan införandet av blockchainbaserade betalningar konstaterades att inte vara genomförbart under den direktmarknadsföringsmodell som existerar idag. Det tredje användningsfallet innebär “självkonsumption”/”framme”-elmätaren, när PV / (vindkraftverk)-ägaren och EV-ägeren är samma person; så när hen laddar sin bil samtidigt med elploduktionen, skulle hen inte behöva betala för kilowattimmar och, beroende på distansen mellan de två elanslutningspunkterna, skulle hen därmed kunna få rabatt på elnätavgiften. För det här fallet konstaterades det att enligt den nuvarande direktmarknadsföringsmodellen, där aggregatorn och laddstationsleverantören tillhör samma företag, skulle ett sådant användningsfall tveklöst kunna genomföras på grund av gemensam bokföring. Ett sådant fall kan bli ett attraktivt erbjudande, särskilt för PV-ägare som inte får inmatningsavgiften. P2P-handelns slutsatser liknar det tidigare användningsfallet. För det andra och tredje användningsfället upptäcktes det att i den situationen då P2P-handel är möjlig, skulle EV-laddningen inte uppfylla "försäljningsbehovet" för producenter eftersom den inte är fullt förutsägbar. Därför måste urvalet av P2P-köpare utvidgas till stationära konsumenter; d.v.s. att bredda det föreslagna systemets funktionaliteter från bara EV-laddning till fullständig P2P-handel. Eftersom EV-laddningen skulle behöva göras i realtid, vara flexibel för laddningsförhållanden, uppfylls behov av flera andelsägare och att vara manipulationssäkert, föreslås distribuerad ledgerteknik (DLT) som implementeringsverktyg. Av två olika DLT, Ethereum och IOTA, drogs slutsatsen att teknikurvalet för att implementera det föreslagna systemet beror på implementeringstiden. Från och med idag ligger Ethereum i ett högre stadium i utvecklingen , vilket prioriterar Ethereum för omedelbar implementering. Samtidigt är IOTA en mycket lovande teknik i ett lägre löptidstillstånd. När de löser ett antal kontroversiella problem blir IOTA ett värdefullt verktyg.

Benedikt Kirpes, Christian Becker

Electromobility, electric vehicles (EVs) and charging infrastructure are major building blocks for a sustainable energy future.With the emergence of sustainable IS topics, energy informatics as the comprising research discipline receives increasing attention.One of the most contemporary research areas in this context is the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) and their integration into the smart power grid of the future.Blockchain is a promising technology to complement lack in charging infrastructure by disrupting existing business models and enabling peer-to-peer sharing of charging stations (CSs).In this paper we investigate how to store and validate EV charging-related data on blockchain and how to process EV charging payment transactions in a blockchain-based IS.Within the ongoing research activity, we evaluate blockchain technologies regarding their applicability for this scenario.Further we implement the presented decentralized app (dApp) design and its smart contracts as a proof-of-concept for the technical feasibility of the solution, considering factors such as interoperability, data storage, trust and scalability.

Usman W. Chohan

No abstract is available for this record.

Zhi Li, Layne Liu, Ali Vatankhah Barenji, Waiming Wang

This paper proposes a cloud-based manufacturing knowledge sharing system for injection mould redesign (IMR) based on blockchain technology. In our proposed system, private cloud is used to store the IMR knowledge, and blockchain provides standards and protocols for implementing the system as well as ensuring the security in a trustless environment. K-Nearest Neighbors is used for retrieving the blockchain-based document knowledge. The proposed system not only can facilitate injection mould redesign, but also provide a mechanism for knowledge owners to share their own assets securely.

Arda Işıldar

The well-being of the society depends on a number of metals, including base metals, precious metals and increasingly rare earth elements (REE). The usage of these metals increased in numerous applications, including electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), and their interrupted supply is at stake. There is an increasing interest in the secondary sources of these metals, particularly waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) in order to compensate their potential supply deficit. This PhD thesis demonstrates the advantages and bottlenecks of biological and chemical approaches, as well as the advances and perspectives in the development of sustainable processes for metal recovery from WEEE. Furthermore, a novel process for the recovery of metals from WEEE is described, and a techno-economic assessment is given.\nDiscarded printed circuit boards (PCB) from personal computers (PC), laptops, mobile phones and telecom servers were studied. Following an extensive literature review, a novel characterization and total metal assay method was introduced and applied to waste board materials. Discarded PCB contained metals in the range of (%, by weight): copper (Cu) 17.6 - 39.0, iron (Fe) 0.7 - 7.5, aluminum (Al) 1.0 - 5.5, nickel (Ni) 0.2 - 1.1, zinc (Zn) 0.3 - 1.2, as well as gold (Au) (in ppm) 21 - 320. In addition, multi-criteria analysis (MCA) using the analytical hierarchical process (AHP) methodology was applied for selection of the best-suited technology. A proof-of-concept for a two-step bioleaching extraction is given, in which 98.4% and 44.0% of the Cu and Au, respectively, were extracted. The two-step extraction procedure was applied to the chemical leaching of metals from PCB. Cu leaching was carried in an acidic oxidative mixture of H2SO4 and H2O2, whereas Au was leached by S2O32− in a NH4+medium, catalyzed by CuSO4. Under the optimized conditions, 99.2% and 92.2% of Cu and Au, respectively, were extracted from the board material. Selective recovery of Cu from the bioleaching leachate using sulfidic precipitation and electrowinning is studied. Cu was selectively recovered on the cathode electrode at a 50 mA current density in 50 minutes, with a 97.8% efficiency and 65.0% purity. The techno-economic analysis and environmental sustainability assessment of the new technology at an early stage of development was investigated.

Komali Yenneti, Premakumara Jagath Dickella Gamaralalage

The solid waste sector is a significant contributor to methane (CH 4 ) emissions with a global warming potential (GWP) of 21 times more than that of CO 2 bringing the need for preventive actions from this sector. In the recent years, composting projects both centralized and decentralized have proved to be addressing this issue. However, much of the decentralized composting projects failed due to their financial and other operational constraints that arise during the course of the implementation. On this regard, the current article reviews the potential of carbon finance as an opportunity for funding decentralized composting projects through demonstrating the application through emission calculation of four cities in Asia. On assessing the emissions, it also identifies the benefits associated with the emissions reduction from the composting projects which might not be available in the absence of the projects. The article also discusses the various carbon financing strategies available in the present market to identify the potential market for inclusion of decentralized composting projects. In the process, the article identifies the issues in the implementation of decentralized composting projects under Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and other carbon markets in general.