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Blockchain for Smart Cities

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Computing and Artificial Intelligence".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 October 2019) | Viewed by 14496

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Dept. of Sustainability Engineering, Guglielmo Marconi University, Roma, Italy
Interests: sustainability engineering; renewable energy; innovative technology for zero-emission vehicles

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Guest Editor
Department of Innovation and Information Engineering, Guglielmo Marconi University, Via Plinio 44, 00193 Rome, Italy
Interests: digital&social innovation; blockchain technology; IoT; data lake and big data architecture

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

After a decade of research and development, there is yet no precise definition for Smart City in the literature or, at least, there is no specific condition under which a city may be defined as smart. By pursuing the evolutionary process that leads towards a smarter city, many projects have been implemented by promoting the pervasive use of technology-based solutions in one or more of the smart city main pillars: Smart mobility, smart environment, smart living, smart people, smart government, and smart economy. However, the wide use of technologies such as urban interconnected sensors, IoT technology, and AI are not able to guarantee that a city becomes intelligent. A city that offers connected and digital services to citizens is not necessarily intelligent or “smart” if the citizens’ quality of life and the overall pillars of the city are not enhanced, according to a holistic and inclusive approach based on sustainable development. Such a sustainable development approach should be able to create citizens’ well-being, economic wealth to boost the private sector and the investments of the involved stakeholders, and to create an overall social and environmental improvement. 

In this scenario, one of the most boosting technologies in the development of both private and public sectors is the Blockchain, which is defined as a distributed ledger able to store information (blocks) across multiple systems securely and to enable peer-to-peer transactions by creating a trustworthy source of ‘truth’ avoiding the so-called “intermediaries of trust”. A wide range of use case applications can be imagined, the Blockchain for Smart Cities being a disruptive technology: Energy and pollution management, improving in the public transportation, security for IoT devices, urban planning, etc.

The Special Issue of the journal Applied Sciences, “Blockchain for Smart Cities”, aims to cover recent advances in the use of Blockchain technology in the development of sustainable and intelligent cities, obtained by researchers, digital innovation managers, and policy-makers responsible for cities’ digital transformation.

Prof. Fabio Orecchini
Prof. Alessandra Pieroni
Guest Editors

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

27 pages, 6744 KiB  
Article
UniChain: A Design of Blockchain-Based System for Electronic Academic Records Access and Permissions Management
by Eman-Yasser Daraghmi, Yousef-Awwad Daraghmi and Shyan-Ming Yuan
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(22), 4966; https://doi.org/10.3390/app9224966 - 18 Nov 2019
Cited by 43 | Viewed by 7654
Abstract
Although blockchain technology was first introduced through Bitcoin, extending its usage to non-financial applications, such as managing academic records, is a new mission for recent research to balance the needs for increasing data privacy and the regular interaction among students and universities. In [...] Read more.
Although blockchain technology was first introduced through Bitcoin, extending its usage to non-financial applications, such as managing academic records, is a new mission for recent research to balance the needs for increasing data privacy and the regular interaction among students and universities. In this paper, a design for a blockchain-based system, namely UniChain, for managing Electronic Academic Records (EARs) is proposed. UniChain is designed to improve the current management systems as it provides interoperable, secure, and effective access to EARs by students, universities, and other third parties, while keeping the students’ privacy. UniChain employs timed-based smart contracts for governing transactions and controlling access to EARs. It adopts advanced encryption techniques for providing further security. This work proposes a new incentive mechanism that leverages the degree of universities regarding their efforts on maintaining academic records and creating new blocks. Extensive experiments were conducted to evaluate the UniChain performance, and the results indicate the efficiency of the proposal in handling a large dataset at low latency. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Blockchain for Smart Cities)
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26 pages, 6721 KiB  
Article
SLA-Based Sharing Economy Service with Smart Contract for Resource Integrity in the Internet of Things
by Lei Hang and Do-Hyeun Kim
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(17), 3602; https://doi.org/10.3390/app9173602 - 2 Sep 2019
Cited by 25 | Viewed by 6230
Abstract
Recently, technology startups have leveraged the potential of blockchain-based technologies to govern institutions or interpersonal trust by enforcing signed treaties among different individuals in a decentralized environment. However, it is going to be hard enough convincing that the blockchain technology could completely replace [...] Read more.
Recently, technology startups have leveraged the potential of blockchain-based technologies to govern institutions or interpersonal trust by enforcing signed treaties among different individuals in a decentralized environment. However, it is going to be hard enough convincing that the blockchain technology could completely replace the trust among trading partners in the sharing economy as sharing services always operate in a highly dynamic environment. With the rapid expanding of the rental market, the sharing economy faces more and more severe challenges in the form of regulatory uncertainty and concerns about abuses. This paper proposes an enhanced decentralized sharing economy service using the service level agreement (SLA), which documents the services the provider will furnish and defines the service standards the provider is obligated to meet. The SLA specifications are defined as the smart contract, which facilitates multi-user collaboration and automates the process with no involvement of the third party. To demonstrate the usability of the proposed solution in the sharing economy, a notebook sharing case study is implemented using the Hyperledger Fabric. The functionalities of the smart contract are tested using the Hyperledger Composer. Moreover, the efficiency of the designed approach is demonstrated through a series of experimental tests using different performance metrics. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Blockchain for Smart Cities)
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