Sustainable business decision modelling with blockchain and digital twins: A survey

TL;DR

This survey explores how blockchain and digital twins can enhance sustainable business decision modelling by analyzing current research, evaluating sustainability features, and demonstrating practical interoperability through a supply chain case study.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of blockchain and digital twin integration in sustainable BDM, including taxonomies, comparative evaluations, and research directions.

Findings

Blockchain and digital twins improve transparency and security in BDM.

Sustainability features impact resource optimization and stakeholder engagement.

Interoperability demonstrated in a supply chain case study.

Abstract

Industry 4.0 and beyond will rely heavily on sustainable Business Decision Modelling (BDM) that can be accelerated by blockchain and Digital Twin (DT) solutions. BDM is built on models and frameworks refined by key identification factors, data analysis, and mathematical or computational aspects applicable to complex business scenarios. Gaining actionable intelligence from collected data for BDM requires a carefully considered infrastructure to ensure data transparency, security, accessibility and sustainability. Organisations should consider social, economic and environmental factors (based on the triple bottom line approach) to ensure sustainability when integrating such an infrastructure. These sustainability features directly impact BDM concerning resource optimisation, stakeholder engagement, regulatory compliance and environmental impacts. To further understand these segments, taxonomies are defined to evaluate blockchain and DT sustainability features based on an in-depth review of the current state-of-the-art research. Detailed comparative evaluations provide insight into the reachability of the sustainable solution in terms of ideologies, access control and performance overheads. Several research questions are put forward to motivate further research that significantly impacts BDM. Finally, a case study based on an exemplary supply chain management system is presented to show the interoperability of blockchain and DT with BDM.