DMap: A Distributed Blockchain-based Framework for Online Mapping in Smart City

TL;DR

DMap introduces a blockchain-based, privacy-preserving, and scalable online mapping platform for smart cities, leveraging edge computing and reputation systems to ensure data integrity and facilitate data trading.

Contribution

It presents the first distributed blockchain solution for online mapping, integrating edge computing, reputation mechanisms, and a data marketplace to enhance scalability, privacy, and data sharing.

Findings

Achieves scalable and privacy-preserving online mapping in smart cities.

Incorporates reputation system to verify data authenticity.

Enables data trading through a dedicated marketplace.

Abstract

Smart cities are growing significantly due to the growth of smart connected vehicles and Internet of Things (IoT) where a wide range of devices are connected to share data. Online mapping is one of the fundamental services offered in smart cities which enables the vehicle owners to find shortest or fastest direction toward a destination thus reduces travel cost and air pollution. However, existing online mapping services rely on centralized servers, e.g., Google, which collect data from users to offer service. This method is unlikely to scale with growth in the smart city participants and introduces privacy concerns and data wall where data of the users is managed by big companies. To address these challenges, in this paper we introduce DMap, a blockchain-based platform where the users can share data in an anonymous distributed manner with service providers. To the best of our knowledge, DMap is the first distributed blockchain-based solution for online mapping. To improve the scalability of the blockchain, we propose to use edge-computing along with blockchain. To protect against malicious vehicles that may inject false data, we define a reputation system where the collected data of the vehicles is verified by monitoring the neighbor data. We introduce data marketplace where users can trade their data to address data wall challenge.