Block-A-City: An Agricultural Application Framework Using Blockchain for Next-Generation Smart Cities

Abstract

Conventional lifestyles and working methods are motivated by rising trends and new technologies to form smart cities. Distributed chains are growing to computerize with a highly complicated framework. It is becoming an essential source of additional advantages in today's digital and smart city. Customers or users of smart cities are highly concerned about the quality of food and farm products. On the other hand, tracking the source information is challenging and, preserving its provenance throughout the supply chain network. Traditional supply chain networks are centralized, where a third party does the trading. These centralized systems lack of quality transparency and distribution accountability. Therefore, we provide a promising approach with a unique strategy for converting conventional agriculture to smart agriculture, concerning smart cities, considering blockchain technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) features. The blockchain technique is responsible for maintaining the immutability of the existing network. Still, it faces problems resolving fundamental issues in the distribution chain, like the trustworthiness of the different involved members, transaction responsibility, and real-time tracking. As a result, a trustworthy organization with traceability, conviction, confirmed transportation, and transparent mechanisms in the e-farm supply chain is proposed. Ethereum is used to deploy the proposed smart contract. Testing with the Hyperledger caliper measuring tool shows performance evaluation of several factors such as latency, throughput, resource consumption transaction per second, and so on are assessed. The findings support the effectiveness of the recommended strategy.