How can we transform cities with Blockchain?
Dr. Tia Kansara at UIA 2021 Rio Expo, May 2021.
A smart city is a city that has implemented an effective integration of physical, digital and human systems in the built environment to deliver a sustainable, prosperous and inclusive future for its citizens. (British Standards Institute, c.f. Centre for Cities, 2014).
This blog introduces Blockchain, and how it may be used to resolve a range of city-based challenges arising from broader global concerns like national population increases, urban density, anthropomorphic climate change, urban pollution and mobility, local and national citizen services and infrastructure.
Keywords: IoT, Blockchain, mobility, urbanization, energy, power, cybersecurity
The UN approximates that by 2030, over 700 cities will have populations of over 1 million people (UN, 2018a), A further 2.6 billion people are expected to move to cities by 2050 (UN, 2018a). Megacities, like Tokyo, New Delhi, Shanghai, Mexico City and Sao Paulo have still yet more to grow (UN, 2018a). With climate change urgently changing global conditions for everyone, sustainable planning has never been more in demand (IOFM, 2017), yet, notwithstanding the influx, cities appear to be the least prepared for the challenges that urban conglomerations will face in the next two decades (IPCC, 2018).
How are countries planning to integrate Blockchain nationally?
Many countries are integrating Blockchains into city services for: increased efficiency, effectiveness and motivating beneficial behavioural change for socio-environmental benefits.
Dubai
Dubai plans to be the first country in the world fully operated on the Blockchain (Smart Dubai 2021, n.d). The Smart City program, launched in 2014, involves the phased implementation of more than 54 2021, n.d). The Smart City program, launched in 2014, involves the phased implementation of more than 545 projects that will change the way residents and visitors of Dubai interact with the city.
These include rail ventures, marine plans, and aviation projects. The implementation of a Blockchain system into the urban structure is projected to save about $1.5 billion and 25.1 million man-hours due to increased efficiency in the processing of documents, which is supposed to set government institutions free from queues. Blockchain will be also applied in logistics and storage.
China
Chinese authorities are actively studying Blockchain for more orderly data storage. On April 24, the National Audit Office of China discussed the use of the technology to solve problems inherent in centralized storage infrastructure. However, despite the green light given by the government, it is not yet known how soon the discussion of the project will go into the implementation phase.
Alibaba Cloud & Waltonchain also signed a strategic cooperation agreement in 2018 for the use of Blockchain technology to develop smart cities. The results of the partnership are designed to address the problem of limited resources and services caused by the rapidly growing megapolis population of Xiong’an. Merging IoT, AI and Blockchain, the focus areas of this partnership of would be to establish new smart cities in Xiong’an and Yuhang while promoting the Waltonchain Blockchain technology for commercial and municipal IoT coverage (Achal. 2018)
US
Authorities officially recognized electronic transactions recorded in Blockchains as verifiable data, and the bill was signed in order to legalize Blockchain transactions for accounting and other business records for local companies. However, the Carney administration introduced more caution than its predecessor and progress has slowed down of late (Tinianow & Long, 2017).
NASA have just released plans for an air traffic management system on the Blockchain. Using a permissioned Blockchain for secure, anonymous communication (Zmudzinski, 2019)
Blockchain Possibilities for Urban Concerns
Mobility
Blockchain offers immense possibilities in improving urban transit (also known as mobility-as-a-service) and its attendant physical and digital manifestations. Such as mobility-related transactions and data collection and sharing — bringing siloed data under a single roof (say GPS records from a public bus as traffic ebbs and flows through high-volume corridors). This is due to Blockchain’s unique ability to record transactions while establishing secure, nonproprietary identities without the reliance on a centralised intermediary.
Citizens be able access any mobility service in their city — whether public or private — and compare it, interoute it, and pay for it on one platform, saving time and money. Mobility companies will also benefit from the efficiencies and increased competition this brings. IoMob will mean that all mobility services — for example, rental scooters — are being used as much as possible within the city, meaning that mobility providers will be able to sell more journeys using fewer resources, making urban transportation not only more sustainable but more profitable. IoMob will also allow companies to make fair and secure agreements between one other through smart contracts, and, furthermore, the app should level the playing field, allowing a greater diversity of companies to survive and thrive alongside each other.
How can Blockchain ensure Cyber Security?
One of the most powerful attributes of Blockchain is the ability to record all activity on the network in tamper-proof logs. In increasingly connected city infrastructure, the use of Blockchains make it impossible for any potential attackers to hide or erase their attempts to access or misuse information within a secure city network. Further, the instant visibility offered by miners on the network means infected devices can be removed, and access to other devices disabled to prevent any escalation of a cyberattack.
Smart Cities
Smart cities are the next and inevitable step in urbanization. As more people migrate to large cities in search of employment and a better standard of living, cities are becoming increasingly congested and difficult to manage. Digital transformation enables cities to grow towards generating better social, financial and environmental aspects of urban living, making smart cities more operationally efficient, cleaner and safer.
For a truly integrated and collaborative approach to public service management, a secure, transparent system with a common language and rules, like Blockchain, will be needed in future. The benefit of Blockchain, for integrated service provision, is inherent in the shared service; with different service providers, agencies or integrated smart technology systems [street signals, sensors, the Internet of Things] putting their data on a shared Blockchain, it behoves as many agencies as possible to join, because all providers then have access to all the data on the chain. With the ability to share data easily, if residents are willing to surrender their data, the incentive is self-fulfilling: providers receive access to all the data on the chain because it’s a public, viewable dataset and beneficiaries (i.e., the residents) gain access to improved, integrated services.
India was one of the first countries to release a smart city agenda. The second most populated country in the world, India launched their Smart Cities Mission in 2015 aiming to develop 100 smart cities in the country. While the Indian government has not precisely defined the term “smart city,” key features are generally expected to include efficient transportation, energy-efficient buildings and robust digital connectivity, as well as adequate water and electricity supplies, sound governance and affordable housing. The program has the potential to impact around 100 million of the country’s 1.25 billion citizens.
Behaviour Change
Blockchain also facilitates fractional ownership, allowing the tokenization of goods and information that have not previously ever been securitized. This means that urban citizens can own parts (or percentages) of urban infrastructure and initiatives, like local wind turbines, or even urban farms or cooperative food stores, and exchange their shares in these assets (or the outcomes of assets or processes, such as renewable energy) transparently and securely via Blockchain-based smart contracts and token systems. Thus, smart cities represent a win:win solution for residents and providers alike.
The fundamental limitations to scale Blockchain suffers becomes of more minor concern in the context of smart cities, for their function is often coupled with other technologies such as IoT or AI which enables scale better. Sensor networks including sensor grids, are widely used in the urban environment whereby any number of devices can be used to scale up or down as appropriate. Advances in AI and image recognition allows for a reduction in the price of increasing reliability of vehicle and pedestrian traffic-flow, queues, density, hyperlocal weather data and circumstantial street closures or work, narrowing or closing lanes.
Blockchain solutions can also provide smart contracting for traffic regulations, or more direct measures such as redirections or prohibitive geo-fencing.
Service Provision
The energy market takes time to change, however, not least because of the cost of updating legacy infrastructure. It may take years before Blockchain, which will interact with IoT, artificial intelligence and big data, will be integrated to manage urban services and public infrastructures.
However, many countries in the world have already embarked on the path of a digital economy and very soon we could see qualitative changes in social, economic and environmental aspects of life, without piles of papers, giant traffic jams, documentation errors and double transactions.
In Conclusion
City management authorities may initially be reluctant to adopt Blockchain technology because for the fear it threatens their position as a centralised third party public intermediator.
But, in truth, city governments will not be eliminated by Blockchain: rather, their role will simply change. Rather than public assets and resources being owned and controlled by public authorities and, increasingly, private-sector companies and investors, the increasing presence of Blockchain in cities should means that everybody — including citizens -can invest in their local community and its assets and have more influence over the strategic direction of their local area.
Dr. Tia Kansara (@tiakansara) was one of the speakers at the world’s largest Architecture and Urban Planning forum, the 27th World Congress of Architects — UIA 2021 RIO.
This blogpost refers to the research paper that she presented in her talk : ‘Transforming cities through blockchain’.
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