Blockchain for Waste Management in Smart Cities: A Survey
- Raja Wasim Ahmad ,
- Khaled Salah ,
- Raja Jayaraman ,
- Ibrar Yaqoob ,
- Mohammed Omar
Abstract
Smart cities have the potential to overcome environmental problems
caused by improper waste disposal to improve human health, protect the
aquatic ecosystem, and reduce air pollution. However, today's systems,
approaches, and technologies leveraged for waste management are manual
and centralized that make 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.