Blockchain and IoT Integration for Air Pollution Control

Blockchain is a disruptive technology that enables untrusted parties to securely store and process data without the need of a centralised trusted party. In the context of data storage, blockchains offer a distributed database architecture that ensures data redundancy, fault tolerance and resistance to unauthorised alterations. The inherent immutability of blockchain technology guarantees the integrity of stored data, making them particularly suitable for applications where tamper-proof records are essential. These properties make blockchain the most natural infrastructure to build truly decentralised and secure IoT systems where IoT data can be shared and processed securely across untrusted entities without the need of a centralised trusted party. IoT and blockchain integration suffers of well known scalability issues. IoT systems can produce a high amount of data which can cause poor blockchain throughput and high fees. This paper presents an IoT application in the context of Industry 4.0 sustainability. In particular, a private blockchain is used in order to design and implement a system for air pollution control. Novel on-chain smart contracts for data storage and their aggregations are proposed. The approach has been implemented and evaluated in terms of its strengths, weaknesses and limitations with respect to the currently existing blockchain technologies.