Page 6 - U4SSC Blockchain for smart sustainable cities

Executive summary

As the world is exploring new methods to face pre-existing urban challenges, the concept of "smart cities"
can offer guidance on making cities more resilient and responsive to crises. In the current scenario, global
crises and their human and economic impact have also provided a new impetus for the uptake of digital tools
and emerging technologies.
The coupling of artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of things (IoT) in the urban ecosystem has brought
about an unprecedented demand for ensuring the transparency, security and privacy of data. These frontier
technologies, combined with blockchain, have become promising tools capable of addressing global
urban expectations. To this end, blockchain has found a wide spectrum of applications within the cities,
encompassing a diversity of public services from health and finance to education and energy, among others.
This makes blockchain a critical technology in the effort of making cities more sustainable by addressing
several targets stipulated in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including Sustainable Development
Goal 11 on Sustainable Cities and Communities, for the establishment of smart cities.
This report delves into the current advancements and applications of blockchain in smart cities, across the
various verticals. It further explores the role played by blockchain technologies in designing an efficient,
secure and scalable distributed architecture to address the significant challenges on interoperability
protocols, security and privacy, data collection and sharing, data analytics, and latency within smart cities. As
a stepping-stone for the penetration of blockchain technologies into the global smart city agenda, this report
underscores a series of use-cases highlighting the adoption of this technology into various spheres. Building
on the analysis of the use-cases, the report also identifies promising areas for future research in this domain.
Based on the analysis of the use-cases in terms of the challenges, opportunities and lessons learned, this
report demonstrates the complexity of the blockchain for cities and proposes the 4S (Situation, Sustainability,
Smartness, and Suitability) framework by highlighting the critical dimensions and patterns for the application
of blockchain in smart cities.
Blockchain-based smart city initiatives are complex and compel the involvement of multiple stakeholders,
and require different types of expertise. For further progress on the blockchain front, building an ecosystem
to share knowledge and expertise as well as developing capabilities is critical. It is also essential to enable
new opportunities for collaboration that will require defining an adequate governance model, aligning all the
stakeholders to a shared vision for the city, and creating an appropriate regulatory framework that provides
flexibility for future innovation. Accordingly, the report concludes with a sequence of research-driven policy
recommendations that should be incorporated by the urban stakeholders and decision-makers for embracing
the required frameworks and translating them into action plans to facilitate blockchain use within the realm
of smart cities.

It is expected that low- and middle- income countries will face significant challenges related to creating
a conducive ecosystem for the appropriate use of blockchain technologies, which requires substantial
investment in digital infrastructure as well as technology transfer. Efforts in this direction are expected
to enable the development of initiatives using blockchain that could support cities as well as rural areas
and communities, to face economic, social and environmental challenges (in line with the Sustainable
Development Goals).

iv U4SSC: Blockchain for smart sustainable cities