Towards a blockchain-based API to ensure data interoperability and transparency in the registration and inspection processes of Brazilian water dams
Antonio Jefferson Macedo, Allysson Allex Araújo, Raphael Saraiva, Pamella Soares, Emerson B. Tomaz, Itamara Taveira · 2023
Context: the rupture of water dams leads to social, economic, and environmental catastrophes. To mitigate this threat, the Brazilian National Dam Safety Policy was designed to regulate safety actions, including requirements for dam registration, technical inspection, and accountability. Problem: even with the continuous effort to guarantee the safety of water dams, there are critical issues regarding data interoperability and transparency concerning dam registration and inspection processes. In regions of Brazil, part of this data is still collected on paper forms and reports are available as spreadsheets, for example. Solution: a blockchain-based Application Programming Interface (API) to support the registration and inspection of water dams. Blockchain technology has proved to be especially relevant due to its property of recording digital events in an immutable, transparent, and resilient way. IS Theory: we followed Design Theory by gathering an understanding between social and technical perspectives of the artifact. Method: a multi-method strategy based on Design Science Research to understand the problem and develop a proof of concept. For evaluation, a computational experiment was carried out (focusing on performance analysis covering different elapsed time, throughput, and latency time) that showed the preliminary viability of the artifact in terms of computational performance. Contributions and Impact in the IS area: a novel blockchain-based API for water dam registration and inspection in line with Brazilian legislation. This API drives to a rich opportunity for advancing knowledge at the intersection between the fields of Information Systems and Dam Management from a sociotechnical point of view, which is quite scarce in the literature.