Blockchain technology promises to improve the efficiency, transparency, and accountability of humanitarian operations. Yet at the same time, especially the humanitarian context with its characteristic volatility poses unique challenges to any technology. Most prominent are the humanitarian principles that are fundamental to humanitarian operations. These ethical principles are set to protect the most vulnerable populations. Designing blockchain projects in the humanitarian context therefore requires a systematic framework that helps humanitarians make critical choices.
In this paper, an integrated blockchain-based energy management platform is proposed that optimizes energy flows in a microgrid whilst implementing a bilateral trading mechanism. Physical constraints in the microgrid are respected by formulating an Optimal Power Flow (OPF) problem, which is combined with a bilateral trading mechanism in a single optimization problem. The Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) is used to decompose the problem to enable distributed optimization and a smart contract is used as a virtual aggregator.
#SmartME has been one of the first initiatives in Italy to realize a Smart City through the use of open technologies. Thanks to the use of low cost sensor-powered devices scattered over the city area, different “smart” services have been deployed having the Stack4Things framework as the common underlying middleware. In this paper, we present the results obtained after 2 years of project highlighting the vertical solutions that have been proposed in different areas ranging from environmental monitoring to parking management.
Blockchains or distributed ledgers are an emerging technology that has drawn considerable interest from energy supply firms, startups, technology developers, financial institutions, national governments and the academic community. Numerous sources coming from these backgrounds identify blockchains as having the potential to bring significant benefits and innovation. Blockchains promise transparent, tamper-proof and secure systems that can enable novel business solutions, especially when combined with smart contracts.
