Abstract
Smart cities have the potential to overcome environmental problems caused by improper waste disposal by improving human health, protecting the aquatic ecosystem, and reducing air pollution. However, today’s systems, approaches, and technologies leveraged for waste management are manual and centralized. This fact makes them vulnerable to manipulation and the single point of failure problem. Also, a large portion of the existing waste management systems within smart cities fall short in providing operational transparency, traceability, audit, security, and trusted data provenance features. In this paper, we explore the key role of blockchain technology in managing waste within smart cities as it can offer traceability, immutability, transparency, and audit features in a decentralized, trusted, and secure manner. We discuss the opportunities brought about by blockchain technology in various waste management use cases and application scenarios, including real-time tracing and tracking of waste, reliable channelization and compliance with waste treatment laws, efficient waste resources management, protection of waste management documentation, and fleet management. We introduce a framework that leverages blockchain-based smart contracts to automate the key services in terms of waste management of smart cities. We compare the existing blockchain-based waste management solutions based on important parameters. Furthermore, we present insightful discussions on several ongoing blockchain-based research projects and case studies to highlight the practicability of blockchain in waste management. Finally, we present open challenges that act as future research directions.
Highlights
Since the past decade, worldwide cities have been continuously generating an enormous amount of waste that is putting a harmful effect on human health and the environment
CONCLUDING REMARKS AND RECOMMENDATIONS In this article, we have discussed how blockchain technology can be leveraged for managing waste within smart cities in a manner that is decentralized, tamper-proof, transparent, traceable and trackable, auditable, secure, and trustworthy
We explored the key opportunities offered by blockchain technology for managing various activities and actions related to the collection, shipment, segregation, disposal, and recycling of waste in smart cities
Summary
Worldwide cities have been continuously generating an enormous amount of waste that is putting a harmful effect on human health and the environment. It is reported that 33% of the generated solid waste in cities do not manage in an environmentally friendly and safer way [1], [2]. The proper management of waste in smart cities requires close coordination and collaboration among the involved stakeholders such as waste generators, collectors, shipper, and waste treatment facilities. Blockchain technology presents a single and unified platform that can be used by the involved stakeholders in waste management of cities to share data in an effective, secure, transparent, and verifiable manner [6]–[8]. Since blockchain follows a decentralized architecture, it is a highly fault-tolerant, robust, and trusted technology
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