Developing Sustainable Solutions for Waste Management in Smart Cities Using Blockchain
Jeyamala Chandrasekaran, A. M. Abirami · 2021
The objectives of smart cities primarily focus on Enhancing the standard of living of citizens through upgrading and seamless integration of infrastructure with analytics and sensor networks Increasing the economic competitiveness for talent acquisition and industrial investments Developing a sustainable and eco-friendly environment. Various domains such as e-governance, education, health care, water management, waste management, energy management, urban mobility, incubation/trade facilitation centers and skill development centers are included in the smart city mission. Waste management includes the activities and actions required to manage waste from its inception to its final disposal. This includes the collection, transport, treatment and disposal of waste, together with monitoring and regulation of the waste management process. Many of the government agencies involved in waste management maintain and administer large volumes of data. Lack of transparency and lack of automation are the major challenges in a waste management system. The prime focus on development of sustainable solutions for smart cities has opened up the venues for integrating modern technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain technologies and much more. This chapter explores the various approaches to integration of blockchain technology in developing sustainable solutions for waste management. The objectives of the smart cities mission and its focus domains are detailed in Section 1. Section 2 highlights the challenges in present waste management systems. The working principle of blockchain technology and its characteristics are presented in Section 3. The advantages of using blockchain technology for waste management are presented in Section 4. A few case studies on application of blockchain, mainly in solid waste management and industrial waste management, are reported in Section 5. Potential problem statements and research directions are presented in Section 6. The chapter concludes in Section 7 with major remarks and inferences of the study.