The Merits of a Decentralized Pollution-Monitoring System Based on Distributed Ledger Technology

The Merits of a Decentralized Pollution-Monitoring System Based on Distributed Ledger Technology

Pollution-monitoring systems (PMSs) are used worldwide to sense environmental changes, such as air quality conditions or temperature increases, and to monitor compliance with regulations. However, organizations manage the environmental data collected by such PMSs in a centralized manner, which is wh...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE access Vol. 8; pp. 189365 - 189381
Main Authors: Lucking, Markus, Kannengieber, Niclas, Kilgus, Maurice, Riedel, Till, Beigl, Michael, Sunyaev, Ali, Stork, Wilhelm
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Piscataway IEEE 2020
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subjects:
Air pollution
Air quality
Blockchain
Data management
Digital signatures
Distributed databases
Distributed ledger
distributed ledger technology (DLT)
Environmental monitoring
Internet of Things (IoT)
LoRa
low-energy sensors
Monitoring
Peer-to-peer computing
Pollution
Pollution monitoring
pollution monitoring systems
Product design
Regulations
Requirements analysis
Sensor phenomena and characterization
Software
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Summary:Pollution-monitoring systems (PMSs) are used worldwide to sense environmental changes, such as air quality conditions or temperature increases, and to monitor compliance with regulations. However, organizations manage the environmental data collected by such PMSs in a centralized manner, which is why recorded environmental data are vulnerable to manipulation. Moreover, the analysis of pollution data often lacks transparency to outsiders, which may lead to wrong decisions regarding environmental regulations. To address these challenges, we propose a software design for PMSs based on distributed ledger technology (DLT) and the long-range (LoRa) protocol for flexible, transparent, and energy-efficient environment monitoring and data management. To design the PMS, we conducted a comprehensive requirements analysis for PMSs. We benchmarked different consensus mechanisms (e.g., BFT-SMaRt and Raft) and digital signature schemes (e.g., ECDSA and EdDSA) to adequately design the PMS and fulfill the identified requirements. On this basis, we designed and implemented a prototype PMS and evaluated it in the field. The evaluation shows the effectiveness of DLT-based PMSs that include portable low-energy sensor nodes and demonstrates the applicability of the proposed software design for PMSs in contexts other than air pollution.
ISSN:2169-3536
2169-3536
DOI:10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3028430