Blockchain-Based Proof of Location

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, many applications of blockchain technology have been developed, from cryptocurrencies to smart contracts. A blockchain is essentially a temporally ordered list of permanent data blocks. At the core of blockchain technology, there is a decentralized emergent consensus protocol that enables a group of agents to reach an agreement about a global state by accepting data transmitted across an open byzantine peer-to-peer network.

A smart contract encodes a set of public functions that are executed by the platform when a certain event occurs. To be effective, a smart contract has to be able to interact with the surrounding environment. In particular, geographical positions together with time are probably the most important pieces of information that smart contracts need to access. For instance, a smart contract may be required to execute only when an agent is verifiably at a certain location.

The term proof of location (PoL) denotes the achievement of a consensus on whether an object or agent is verifiably at a certain point in space and time. This Special Issue will promote new and innovative studies about how PoL could be integrated and used in smart contracts and how to perform subsequent analyses on them.

I invite you to participate in this Special Issue with contributions related (but not limited) to the following topics:

• Representing spatial information on the blockchain
• Indexing spatial information on the blockchain
• Handling geographic information uncertainty in smart contracts triggered by geospatial events
• Big geo-data on the blockchain including integration with other distributed decentralized database systems
• Distributed, peer-to-peer spatial data infrastructure
• Location-aware smart contracts
• Location verification for smart contracts
• Producer ownership of volunteered geographic information
• Peer-to-peer geospatial data and public participation GIS
• Trust, reputation, and distributed consensus for geospatial information
• Geospatial metadata and geo-privacy issues for data on distributed ledgers
• Spatial applications of distributed ledger technology: for augmented reality, the internet of things, cloud computing, autonomous mobile systems, land ownership registry, environmental resource management, etc.
• Spatial analysis of public blockchain networks and users

Assis. Prof. Sara Migliorini
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• proof of location
• presence claim
• spatiotemporal data
• blockchain
• smart contracts