Blockchain Papers

Maria-Lluïsa Marsal-Llacuna

No abstract is available for this record.

Nikolai Siniak, Tom Kauko, Sergey Shavrov, Ninoslav Marina

Abstract The real estate industry is currently undergoing a digital transformation that not only changes its nature in terms of the markets and work environments, but is also influencing its growth. What are the main trends and concerns related to this transformation? To what extent is the real estate industry already prepared for this? This paper reviews the situation in terms of the emergence of a phenomenon known as PropTech. PropTech is characterized by the massive implementation of emerging technology such as home matching tools, drones, virtual reality, building information modelling (BIM), data analytics tools, artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain, smart contracts, crowdfunding in the real estate sector, fintechs related to real estate, smart cities, regions, smart homes and shared economy. This survey of changes in the real estate industry due to PropTech covers four areas: (1) PropTech applications in the real estate industry; (2) implications of PropTech for real estate market transparency; (3) how PropTech could give a region or a company a competitive advantage; and (4) concerns on the wider implications of these changes on a labour market and education. In a plausible scenario, changing the real estate technologies could change system dynamics and improve real estate market transparency. Moreover, it can be asserted that, in a broader sense, PropTech is beneficial for territorial competition and territorial growth strategies. And lastly, under different institutional arrangements, PropTech can affect the changing structure of the real estate market, the demand for hi-tech, new skills as well as emerging policy challenges for the real estate industry.

Susana Borrás, Jakob Edler

The transformative turn of innovation policy has resulted in calls for a more entrepreneurial and directional role of the state. However, the multiple roles that the state might play remains underexplored. This paper studies the embedded role of the state in four distinct modes of governance of socio-technical systems. Using a three-pillar analytical model, the paper examines four illustrative cases: cryptocurrencies, smart cities, automated vehicles, and nuclear power. The paper identifies 13 different roles of the state: observer, warner, mitigator, opportunist, facilitator, lead-user, enabler of societal engagement, gatekeeper, promoter, moderator, initiator, guarantor and watchdog. The conceptualization of these roles serves to understand that the transformative agency of the state is leveraged/constrained by the modes of governance, and that it is also ultimately exercised through specific mixes of roles.

Thays A. Oliveira, Miquel Oliver, Helena Ramalhinho

The way citizens interact with cities affects overall life quality. Their participation in social decisions is of paramount importance for helping on public decisions that affect governance, regulation and education. This interaction has the potential of being boosted within the scope of smart and digital cities, especially by recent advances in blockchain technology. This work introduces insights about how smart cities’ concepts and innovative technologies can help society to face daily challenges for improving citizens’ awareness. Digital technologies are able to drive social and economic development by employing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to promote innovation. In this context, e-governance, in conjunction with disruptive concepts such as blockchain, is showing up as a fundamental tool for a decentralized democracy. This study reviews, discusses, raises open points and presents suggestions towards an efficient, transparent and sustainable use of technology, applied to future cities.

Shilpi Shilpi, Mohd Abdul Ahad

Blockchain technology can be termed as a revolutionary innovation that has transformed the manner of data sharing by making it more secure and immutable. The existence of a mutual trust model which includes every participating entity makes it a widespread adopted technology in recent years. Due to i

Parminder Singh, Anand Nayyar, Avinash Kaur, Uttam Ghosh

Fog computing (FC) is used to reduce the energy consumption and latency for the heterogeneous communication approaches in the smart cities’ applications of the Internet of Everything (IoE). Fog computing nodes are connected through wired or wireless medium. The goal of smart city applications is to develop the transaction relationship of real-time response applications. There are various frameworks in real-world to support the IoE in smart-cities but they face the issues like security, platform Independence, multi-application assistance, and resource management. This article is motivated from the Blockchain and Fog computing technologies and presents a secured architecture Blockchain and Fog-based Architecture Network (BFAN) for IoE applications in the smart cities. The proposed architecture secures sensitive data with encryption, authentication, and Blockchain. It assists the System-developers and Architects to deploy the applications in smart city paradigm. The goal of the proposed architecture is to reduce the latency and energy, and ensure improved security features through Blockchain technology. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed architecture performs better than the existing frameworks for smart-cities.

Phui Fung Wong, Fah Choy Chia, M S Kiu, Eric Lou

Abstract The rise of global urbanisation has led to massive pressures on resources such as food, water, infrastructure, and energy demand to support growing populations. It brings adverse impacts on the liveable condition and economic growth of a country if this problem remains unsolved. Smart city is a potential solution to address the challenges of urbanisation by leveraging the technological breakthrough such as internet of things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, big data, and cloud computing to facilitate scarce resources planning and management. With numerous connected devices and vast communication networks, it poses a challenges of security threat which cannot be addressed by the conventional cybersecurity solutions. Blockchain offers a solution in securing the huge numbers of connected devices in smart city network. The application of blockchain technology is leading in the banking and financial industry. However, the uses and implementations in smart city have emerged in recent years. The combination of blockchain technology and smart city has offered a great potential for sustainable development. Thus, it is imperative to discuss the potential of these two elements in making the city safer and sustainable. This paper explores how the blockchain technology application can help in managing smart city and achieve sustainability. The findings revealed that there are five key areas of blockchain application in smart city which are smart governance, smart mobility, smart asset, smart utility and smart logistic. A framework for smart sustainable city with blockchain technology is presented as an outcome of this study. It gives a clear overview for the policy makers and regulators of how blockchain supports within smart city framework. It facilitates the transition towards smart and sustainable cities through the use of blockchain.

Ekleen Kaur, Anshul Oza

No abstract is available for this record.

Bojan Radojević, Lazar Lazić, Marija Cimbaljević

The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed numerous, lasting adverse effects on the global tourism industry. At the same time, it exposed the competitive advantages that existing smart tourism infrastructure could provide for addressing urgent health issues and providing meaningful smart services. This paper initially provides examples of smart geospatial services based on COVID-19 pandemic-related data, such as algorithms for measuring social distancing through CCTV and proximity contract tracing protocols and applications. Indeed, smart destinations, as an evolutionary step of smart cities, very quickly became a practical and research framework in various other disciplines, from leisure and service-oriented to technical and geospatial domains. However, various technologies employed and interests of different stockholders create a constant need for rescaling of smart data to facilitate their usability in providing optimized smart tourism services. One of the pressing concerns is the functional alignment of geospatial data with tourism-related data. Thus, we aim to pinpoint the growing importance of smart geospatial services, by pointing to the main downturn of the current smart destination issue with geospatial data resolutions, and, by building upon the relations of the geospatial layer of data with the tourism-specific layer. To this end, we pinpoint two further research directions - reinvestigating spatial and temporal resolution as a core of data smartness and the need for contextual (tourism-oriented) scaling of smart technology. This could be of keen interest in post-pandemic tourism, where smart geospatial services will be of pressing concern, but also it still an issue to be resolved in further smart destination development.

Emmanuel Boateng Sifah, Hu Xia, Christian Nii Aflah Cobblah, Qi Xia · 6 authors

In recent years, the use of blockchain has gained attention in industrial interventions and research. Blockchain technologies can be particularly utilized in the domain of Smart Governance, which is a critical component of Smart Cities. Smart Governance aims to ensure smarter decision making, openness and collaborative participation of all entities involved as well as help minimize resource usage, reduce consumption and save cost. Smart Governance involves putting in place systems for monitoring and evaluating the performance of government workers. However, government workers lack trust in these systems because they are mostly centralized systems which are prone to single-point of failure problems and also data fed into these systems can be tampered with by the higher-ups or employers to favour individual workers. With these problems, there is a need for a decentralized system that can ensure trust, tamper-resistance, accountability, reliability, transparency and security. In this paper, we propose a decentralized employee evaluation system based on blockchain. We utilized a 3-chain model, namely; ID-Chain, Behavior Chain and Credit Chain fused to make a single unified chain. Our system also makes use of an automated game-based employee evaluation approach. Our system is based on Hyperledger Fabric as the blockchain platform and operating mechanism. Our Proof of Concept (PoC) results shows that in utilizing the Blockchain system, security concerns such as trust, privacy, accountability, among others, that are present in current employee performance evaluation systems are tackled and also in the adoption of the game-based automated system, our system can make an effective decision regarding employee performance. Our system achieves trust, transparency, security and accountability among government workers under a Smart City governing environment.

Darcy Parks

Malmö aims to become Sweden’s most climate-smart city and Hyllie, its newest city district, is to lead the way. This ambition is front and centre in the 2011 Climate Contract that envisioned Hyllie as a climate-neutral city district. Malmö signed the Climate Contract with Eon, a multinational energy company. But five years after signing the Climate Contract, Malmö and Eon gave up their goal of a making Hyllie climate-neutral by 2020. The Climate Contract resembles other smart city initiatives that many researchers have criticised for promoting technology-centric, corporation-controlled visions of cities. Assemblage urbanism and the sociology of expectations help to analyse the techno-political dynamics between organisations, visions and urban infrastructure. The realisation of a vision is a techno-political process that requires the coordination of multiple groups around multiple promises. At first, it was the Climate Contract that helped Eon and the city administration to coordinate their activities. Subsequently, Eon made a promise to build wind turbines, and that promise then took precedence in the coordination of their activities. But controversies arose with two publics that emerged in opposition to Eon’s promise: neighbours to the site of the proposed wind turbine and the city’s Property Department. Unable to resolve these controversies, Eon and Malmö acknowledged that they lacked the resources need to make Hyllie climate-neutral. They adapted their original promise to the current state of socio-material assemblages, and Hyllie was demoted from a role model for the climate-smart city to a source of lessons learned.

Carmen-Ionela ROTUNĂ, Alexandru Gheorghiță, Alin Zamfiroiu, Dragos-Marian Smada

With cities' continued growth and development, the implementation of incorporated, compatible, secure online services may improve the level of life for urban residents. Governmental organizations are aware of how digital currencies might be used to solve social challenges.. The concept of block-chain, initially associated with the digital currency bitcoin, offers a novel approach to the organization of smart-cities and a more transparent economic framework for the management of resources. The present research endeavors to examine the prospective advantages of utilizing block-chain-based services to facilitate the expansion of smart cities. Additionally, a Smart-city ecosystem model is suggested, which is founded on smart contracts established between firms, inhabitants, and government agencies. Additionally, it provides a synopsis of the potential application domains of the technology. The results of this study could potentially facilitate the implementation of blockchain technology as a means of facilitating interactions and transactions within the public sector at a regional level.

Saba Latif, Aniqa Rehman, Nazir Ahmad Zafar

The mechanism of integrating smart nodes with each other using a network to communicate, share information is known as Internet of Things (IoT). The usage and simulation of IoT infrastructure in every field is increasing rapidly. Blockchain technology refers to as the interconnected nodes within a network which are independent of each other work as a network. Any node can be a part of blockchain by the permission granted from blocks of blockchain. Blockchain technology is one of the most popular technologies which is used to make processes secured and enhance security of the system. There are many components of smart city which are based on IoT and blockchain technology such as smart water monitoring, sewerage, parking, homes, street lightening, offices, campuses and waste management. We have addressed smart waste management system in which we have integrated different techniques for providing modeling of smart waste management system using IoT and blockchain. The integrated technologies include blockchain, IoT, Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Temporal Logic of Actions (TLA+) for modeling and automating waste management system. There are many operations defined in our model include identification of waste material, trace location, send to trash, categorize waste, transfer waste, recycling and decision-making process. Blockchain based UML model represents the system working in detail. Further UML models are converted into formal model to validate the proposed model formally. The proposed model provides the proof of correctness, preciseness and completeness of our proposed model using TLA+ specification language.

Alexandra Flynn, Mariana Valverde

A startling announcement came on a crisp, fall day in 2017: Sidewalk Labs, a sister company of Google, was awarded a contract to create a ‘smart city’ along a small stretch of Toronto’s largely con...

Jesús Máximo Montes Díaz, Cecilia E. Ramírez, Manuel Coronado Gutierrez, Víctor M. Larios

In Smart Cities, an era of technology and on-demand offerings, being able to have a signed contract in the least amount of time possible can significantly benefit business operations. This project focuses on the Document of Understanding (DOU) contract oriented to supply chain operations, which forms the basis for the relationship between a consumer service and the provider of that service. The sign off of this process is currently too long; opening an opportunity to apply Blockchain as a solution. For this task, we have used local resources, applying design thinking and agile practices to create a local Blockchain Ledger. Consequently, we created a proof of concept Blockchain demo, which holds the complete detailed history of the agreement, with immutable transactions and transparency, adding security and privacy of the participant's information. With this demo, we registered the time needed to have the DOU contract signed off by everyone involved in the process, and it was drastically improved. The innovative contribution of this project is the application of Blockchain to our business activities, improving business operations, and giving us a real-time view of all the information. As a result, when combining our work methods with the latest technology, we have all-around improvements in business operations. Now with a successful trial run of the application, we can confidently apply smart contracts in day to day activities in a Smart City; it can be replicated in other areas that manage sensitive information and financial reports.

H. V. Savitch, William A. Tharp

Big cities are in a netherland of government. While all types of governments face these challenges, big cities furnish an intensity and complexity that set them apart. Intensity and proximity mark the operations of urban bureaucracies. Big city mayors are often said to be ambassadors, and this role is now duplicated by subordinates. Managers represent their cities before metropolitan planning organizations in order to obtain federal highway funding. Urban competition grows more fierce and is sustained by other complementary factors. Cities not only deal with standard problems, but they must become instruments of innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic development. Underlying pressures continue and there is little big city managers can do to eliminate them. Interlocal competition, corporate mobility, and globalism make up the larger environment and are beyond the bounds of local control. Big city finance managers can also be entrepreneurial by strategic investments. The new paradigm also promotes an incremental and decentralized approach to management.

Amitrajeet A. Batabyal, Hamid Beladi

We exploit the public good attributes of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and theoretically analyze an aggregate economy of two smart cities in which ICTs are provided in either a decentralized or a centralized manner. We first determine the efficient ICT levels that maximize the aggregate surplus from the provision of ICTs in the two cities. Second, we compute the optimal level of ICT provision in the two cities in a decentralized regime in which spending on the ICTs is financed by a uniform tax on the city residents. Third, we ascertain the optimal level of ICT provision in the two cities in a centralized regime subject to equal provision of ICTs and cost sharing. Fourth, we show that if the two cities have the same preference for ICTs then centralization is preferable to decentralization as long as there is a spillover from the provision of ICTs. Finally, we show that if the two cities have dissimilar preferences for ICTs then centralization is preferable to decentralization as long as the spillover exceeds a certain threshold.

Shafaq Khan, Mohammed Shael, Munir Majdalawieh

World is experiencing revolution with the proliferation of technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence, IOT, and cloud computing in our lives. This study explores Dubai Economic Department's (DED) electronic government (e-government) stages of integrating emerging technologies as its contribution in creating a smarter city. Our findings suggest that blockchain technology can be used as a platform to transform the e-business operating models in order to offer fully integrated services and to enforce common business rules. It can help governments in making processes simpler, faster and secure. It can be used for syncing of data across different departments, automatically & instantaneously. This work provides policy makers, enterprise architects and IT managers with useful guidelines to define and drive their e-government strategy and planning actions towards the most appropriate domains of implementation.

Vishva Nitin Patel, Chhayaben Nitin Patel

No abstract is available for this record.

Nawari Nawari, Shriraam Ravindran

Blockchain Technology (BCT) is a growing digital technology that in recent years has gained widespread traction in various industries in the public and private sectors. BCT is a decentralized ledger that records every transaction made in the network, known as a ‘block’, the body of which is comprised of encrypted data of the entire transaction history. BCT was introduced as the working mechanism that forms the operational basis of Bitcoin, the first digital cryptocurrency to gain mainstream appeal. The introduction of decentralized data exchange technology in any industry would require strengthened security, enforce accountability, and could potentially accelerate a shift in workflow dynamics from current centralized architectures to a decentralized, cooperative chain of command and affect a cultural and societal change by encouraging trust and transparency. BCT aims at creating a system that would offer a robust self-regulating, self-monitoring, and cyber-resilient data transaction operation, assuring the facilitation and protection of a truly efficient data exchange system. In the state of Florida, climate change and unpredicted weather disasters have put pressure on state and local decision-makers to adapt quick and efficient post-disaster recovery systems. Part of the recovery efforts is the reconstruction of buildings and infrastructure. The introduction of new technologies in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry can contribute to addressing recovery and rebuilding after the event of a natural disaster. With parallel technological advancement in geospatial data and Geographic Information System (GIS), as well as worsening climatic conditions, concerns can be suitably addressed by employing an integrated system of both Building Information Modeling (BIM) and BCT. While several potential applications of BIM must provide solutions to disaster-related issues, few have seen practical applications in recent years that indicate the potential benefits of such implementations. The feasibility of BIM-based applications still rests on the reliability of connectivity and cyber-security, indicating a strong use case for using BCT in conjunction with BIM for post-disaster recovery. This research depicts a survey of BCT and its applications in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industries and examines the potential incorporation within the BIM process to address post-disaster rebuilding problems. Moreover, the study investigates the potential application of BCT in improving the framework for automating the building permitting process using Smart Contract (SC) technologies and Hyperledger Fabric (HLF), as well as discussing future research areas. The study proposes a new conceptualized framework resulting from the integration of BCT and BIM processes to improve the efficiency of building permit processes in post-disaster events.

Shazade Jameson, C. Richter, Linnet Taylor

In this paper, we investigate people’s perception of datafication and surveillance in Amsterdam Smart City. Based on a series of focus groups, we show how people understand new forms of hypervisbility, what strategies they use to navigate these experiences, and what the limitations of these strategies are. We show how people tried to discern between public and private sector actors, to differentiate who they trusted by building on the existing social contract. People also trusted the objectivity of data in relation to prior experiences of social contexts and discrimination. Lastly, we show how the experiences of some of the inhabitants in our study who were most vulnerable to hypervisibility highlight the limits to strategies based on the neutrality of data. By asking about perceived surveillance rather than emphasising actual practices of surveilling, we show differentiated contexts and strategies, providing empirical grounds to question the dominant technical framing of smart cities.

Zaheer Allam, David S. Jones

The rapid rise in urbanization internationally is both driving and stressing our consumption patterns, including that of land use. Urban sprawl is arguably one of the most important threats to human and nature biodiversity given its reliance upon fossil fuel exploitation and consumption. The need for increasing the density of cities is required to contain urban expansion in land size. However, while the footprint density of cities is increasing, vacant plots are prized and rare in most urban areas. Tradable air rights development is seen as a potential solution to provide developers the option of increasing density while encouraging an emerging urban economy. However, the price speculation of air rights is a danger and counter to a fair and inclusive real estate market. This paper proposes a new model that encourages the trading of time-sensitive air rights through Smart Contracts in the Blockchain as a means of prevention against urban sprawl.

Ferran Herraiz Faixó, Francisco-Javier Arroyo-Cañada, María Pilar López-Jurado, Ana Martínez Pérez

No abstract is available for this record.

Jong-Ho Noh, Hun-Yeong Kwon

The smart city is aiming for an intelligent connected society beyond the concept of U-City with simple ICT. In particular, the rapid development of information and communications, such as 5G, and blockchain, has led to a paradigm shift to a new digital urban environment. As smart energy and smart transportation are integrated or interlocked, the technical and institutional arrangement should be preceded from the time of user authentication to provide reliability, transparency, and efficiency. For this purpose, this study aims to investigate the technical and institutional plans for the implementation of safe urban life utilizing blockchain technology. In order to apply smart city services using block-chain technology, it is necessary to fully agree and practice among various stakeholders such as public, business, academia, and civic groups. It is expected to be implemented as a people-centered smart city by gradually applying the block chain-based pilot service, which is made and participated together.