Page 78 - U4SSC Blockchain for smart sustainable cities

The Smartness dimension links the smartness to several aspects, with the support of the technologies.
Studies on how the emerging technologies are contributing to making cities smarter show a positive
impact – mostly in high-income countries –in facilitating economic development, increasing public
efficiency, facilitating good governance, enhancing cooperation, empowering citizens and improving
quality of life. However, it also showed negative impacts such as aggravating or hiding existing urban
problems, polarization and increased inequality. Thus far, the positive effect on social development,
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social capital citizen involvement, innovation, protection of the environment and sustainable
development is not proven. It is critical to understand the specific role of the blockchain technology
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in the smart city to assess its contribution to smartness and sustainability.

5.4 Suitability of blockchain technology in smart city initiative

The suitability of blockchain technology is studied through the analysis of the technical characteristics
of the blockchain for cities, as well as the analysis of the decision models and trees of the applicability
of blockchain in the context of smart cities initiatives.

5.4.1 The technical characteristics and properties of blockchain for cities

The technical characteristics refer to the properties of the blockchain technologies, the consideration
during implementation and the technical deployment of technology. This report compares the cases for
the integration with the legacy systems and other systems, the importance of the security, the type of
framework used, the current users of the system, the type of blockchain, the type of use of the blockchain,
as well as the type of cryptography used (Table 5, Appendix 2).

(1) Integration with Legacy systems

The integration of the cases with legacy systems and the interoperability is considered as critical in 70 per cent
of the cases, which show the importance of this dimension. In the case of Stadjerpass, the integration with
the existing legacy was the main challenge due to the need to build a separate application to transfer data
between the blockchain and the data of the administration. A lack of interoperability between blockchain
frameworks, networks and platforms, as well as between blockchain networks and legacy systems, is a
major concern. Nearly 70 per cent of the distributed ledger technologies claim to be interoperable with
others. However, it is mostly limited to the public Ethereum network, and, to a lesser extent, Bitcoin.
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When a blockchain solution needs to be inserted into an existing IT infrastructure, and receive inputs
from upstream systems, it is important to consider policies and procedures over legacy applications and
processes. In order to maximize the power of blockchain and distributed ledgers technology agreements
will need to be reached about data interoperability, policy interoperability and the effective implementation
of international standards.

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