GeoBlockchain: The Analysis, Design, and Evaluation of a Spatially Enabled Blockchain

Abstract

Land ownership and supply chain use cases are an enormous business challenge for both the public and private sectors. Every organization has different needs and wants, and they are researching and exploring ways to add value and impact their ownership tracing processes. Geospatial and Blockchain technologies are two emerging trends that could help an organization add value in this manner. The combination of blockchain and geospatial technologies would result in the new concept of GeoBlockchain, defined here as an artifact that could be used to study the trends and behaviours of participants (users) geographically and spatially, based on distributed nodes, transactions, and geo-locations through the blockchain technology. GeoBlockchain can also be used to visually display geo-ownership tracing processes (points, lines, and polygons) demonstrating the importance of geography. The result of this research was the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of a Spatially Enabled Blockchain ICT artifacts. Each prototype artifact was built using ArcGIS Enterprise and Hyperledger Fabric. The architecture designs were implemented with on-premises and cloud environments and evaluated based on users’ usability and sociotechnical metrics. This research indicates that blockchain technology can be integrated with geospatial technology, resulting in the GeoBlockchain framework along with its attendant implementation criteria in the age of GeoBlockchain