Recent Advances in IoT and Blockchain Technology

In this age of sensitive information where knowledge is power, our data has become an invaluable resource. Easy and public access to information makes it vulnerable to adulteration. The ever-increasing cases of cyber-attacks are causing organizations to spend an exorbitant amount on security. General cloud storage systems are considered efficient for data storage and sharing, but it has multiple limitations such as data centralization, data leakage, and high maintenance cost. Data centralization makes it a hotspot for cyber-attacks, making it prone to data outflows and tampering. An effective alternative is a decentralized system. With advancements in information technology and cyber security, the need for authenticity and verification is highly sought after, making blockchain technology an extremely indispensable tool in the hands of many organizations and enterprises. It solves the problem of security by encrypting its data storing it as a “Hash” or encoded data so that only the user with the key can access the data. The finance sector is being overwhelmed by the everincreasing reliability of blockchain and the implementation of its framework and architecture. Blockchain is a distributed ledger system across a network of users. The blockchain technology, being decentralized, is proposed as a disseminated and diffused or distributed approach which is testified to decipher and decode the security requirements of the new digital era as well as serve as a platform and a jump pad for advancements in various other fields such as Internet of Things (IoT), data storage, biometric security, healthcare facilities, smart grids, and many more. This chapter begins with a basic outline of all you need to know about blockchain, an upcoming evolutionary technology that ameliorates the world of data decentralization and security. It further explains its use, features, areas of implementation, architecture, as well as its limitations that are detrimental to be cognizant of how the blockchain system works/is implemented. It then explores P2P networks and interplanetary file systems (IPFS) followed by its current use cases in the form of Filecoin. Next, the chapter explores the privacy and security aspects of the blockchain. It showcases some of the faults of blockchain ledgers like Sybil and discusses some techniques that are implemented to fix them. It discusses bitcoin, one of the most secure blockchain architecture to date, and describes private and public keys, peer to peer network, hash.  chained storage, digital signature, and consensus algorithms implemented by bitcoin to prevent any fraudulent transactions from taking place.

Healthcare systems face numerous impediments due to the unavailability of proper mechanisms to track the transactions related to patient’s medical records. The maintenance and privacy of patient records are one of the key requirements of the healthcare system. Blockchain can be the potential solution to these problems. Blockchains have made a tremendous impact ever since their invention barely a decade ago. This paper delves into how blockchain can be used to solve the problem of patient record management by constructing scalable decentralised key systems with inbuilt sharing of credentials in a safe, secure, and digitally verifiable way. The work presents a hybrid scalable system capable of managing personal identity in a decentralized manner with no dependence on central authorities along with a rapid and simplistic way of exchanging claims among the users. The system overcomes potentially all problems associated with SOVRIN and blockchains in general by splitting itself into two symbiotic versions, one centralised and the other, decentralised. 

Healthcare is an indispensable system whose efficiency and robustness are reliable indicators of a nation's prosperity. This sector has seen technological advancements not only in terms of medical equipment and drugs but also in varied fields such as Electronic Medical Records, wearable health monitoring devices, and telemedicine. In this chapter, we explore the aspects of utilising the disruptive technology of blockchain in healthcare. Ever since its initial use in cryptocurrency and finance, aiming to shift the industry from institute-centric to patient-centric, blockchain technology has found its use in healthcare. This chapter analyzes its use cases along with the limitations posed by traditional healthcare systems and how blockchain alleviates them. Furthermore, we will also walk through the roadblocks in implementing blockchain-based healthcare services and discuss a few implemented as well as proposed blockchain-based healthcare frameworks, highlighting their successes and failures. 

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the infrastructure that enables the process of collecting data using various devices which in turn communicate with each other and store this data over the cloud. This helps to retrieve, analyze, and communicate data to any part of the world faster with great efficiency. IoT has indeed opened the doors to endless new possibilities in different areas and industries. From smart home appliances to remotely observing and controlling different objects to self-driven cars and whatnot. The healthcare industry has still not leveraged the true power of this modern IoT revolution. Specifically, when it comes to monitoring the health of elderly people, the techniques used today are still not robust and lack conviction. This has been an area of concern for a long time, and it is an even bigger challenge to remotely monitor the health condition. In this paper, our goal is to depict the current situation of the technology of the health monitoring projects based on IoT and propose an improvement in the actual practices currently prevalent in remote monitoring of the health of elderly people. We will also try to forecast the trend of various health parameters demonstrated in the paper beforehand to make the concerned people aware with precision if any alarming situation is spotted so that instant action can be taken, thus ensuring a reduction of casualties. 

Blockchain technology replaces centralized applications with distributed computing. Modern economy is estimated by the place of motor transport in the infrastructure of the national economy. An automobile registration system is a unified information system. This information system takes care of every information about automobile registration. It is administrated by a national registry entity and has access to other government and non-government services that handle automobile information. Cyber Physical System (CPS) is defined as the combination of computation and physical process. It is mainly used in the ICT section. It is also focused on resolving the problems related to authors of the data regarding transparency, media, and storage problems by technical handling. The presented chapter uses all the above concepts in one place and integrates them to build a useful application. The presented frame allows car manufacturers, owners, repairing companies, and insurance agencies to register and add new car entries through a simple method. In addition, database technology has been leveraged to cache intermediate data. It efficiently uses the Industrial IoT and 5G technologies. Many researchers have called for rules and applications to draw old maps based on distributed applications into the blockchain. New protocols are available in this work for the International Automated Vehicle Management System, called DriveLoop, which were proposed and developed.

This research attempts to overcome the problems faced by the medical healthcare system by using the advancing technology of blockchains. Pharma companies that manufacture and sell medicines face difficulties in tracking drugs, which in turn allows the counterfeiters to exploit the system. The decentralized abilities of blockchain technology enable us to counter the problems in existing centralized systems. The blockchain helps us to make sure that the quality is maintained throughout the decentralized supply chain. The use of blockchains in the medicine supply chain solution entails tracking the validity of the medicine from the producer to the distributor to the pharmacy. It assures that the pharmacist receives the original medication and does not reach the grey market. In this paper, the decentralized application which we created works using Ethereum and is based on blockchain technology. The medicine discovered by a pharmaceutical company is to be validated by an officer in a decentralized manner using smart contracts over Ethereum transactions. The validated drugs can then be produced and sold on the platform, where the entire data and the stages of the drug/medicine are tracked and stored. Research and development of such a system are necessary to facilitate the proper supply and tracking of medicines and to avoid counterfeiting. 

A significant amount of research has been carried out in extracting land surface objects, but intelligent digital surface models for monitoring land surface objects are still an active research topic due to emerging technologies such as IoT and Blockchain. These technologies play an important role in quantifying the ecological and geographical properties of the land surface. About such technology of detecting buildings, roads, and terrain from satellite images offer a lot of potential for tracking the migration of large chunks of the population and helps in geographical analysis of the city. In this paper, we explore a Convolutional Neural Network method for extracting land surface objects from satellite imaging with the help of U-Net. As a known fact, the number of disasters occurring every year affects thousands of the population, so suitable mechanisms must be provided for rescue operations. To provide these rescue operations, predictions about the geographical location are of primary importance. Our model produces reasonable accuracy of 60.62% at a very minimal loss rate.