A Blockchain-Based Framework for Secure and Transparent Environmental Data Sharing in Smart Cities: Enhancing Trust, Integrity, and Interoperability in Urban Sustainability Systems
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.38043/natapalemahan.v2i2.6996Keywords:
blockchain, smart cities, environmental data, trust, interoperabilityAbstract
Blockchain technology has emerged as a transformative tool to address critical challenges in environmental data management within smart cities, particularly enhancing trust, data integrity, and interoperability. This systematic literature review aims to analyze how blockchain frameworks support secure and transparent environmental data sharing for sustainable urban development. The study involved a comprehensive search of multiple academic databases, including IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, Wiley, and MDPI, covering publications from 2019 to 2025. A total of 23 relevant papers were selected and critically examined. The results reveal that blockchain-based solutions often integrate with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and digital twins to improve data validation, governance, and real-time analytics. Key innovations include decentralized trust frameworks, smart contract governance, and interoperability models like Blockchain-of-Blockchains. Despite these advancements, challenges such as scalability, energy consumption, and lack of standardization persist. The review concludes that while blockchain offers a robust foundation for secure and interoperable environmental data systems in smart cities, ongoing research and collaboration are essential to overcome current limitations and achieve sustainable, transparent urban ecosystems.
References
Islam, R. Bose, S. Roy, A. A. Khan, S. Sutradhar, S. Das, et al., Decentralized trust framework for smart cities: a blockchain-enabled cybersecurity and data integrity model, Sci. Rep., vol. 15, no. 1, p. 23454, 2025.
M. S. Rahman, M. A. P. Chamikara, I. Khalil, and A. Bouras, Blockchain-of-blockchains: An interoperable blockchain platform for ensuring IoT data integrity in smart city, J. Ind. Inf. Integr., vol. 30, p. 100408, 2022.
M. Vaseei and M. N. JanAgha, Building Transparent and Secure Smart City Platforms, in Artificial Intelligence of Everything and Sustainable Development, Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore, 2025, pp. 105121.
S. K. Singh, S. Kumar, S. Garg, S. Arora, S. K. Sharma, V. Arya, and K. T. Chui, Blockchain-Based Data Security in Smart Cities: Ensuring Data Integrity and Trustworthiness, in Digital Forensics and Cyber Crime Investigation, CRC Press, 2025, pp. 1741.
I. Makhdoom, I. Zhou, M. Abolhasan, J. Lipman, and W. Ni, PrivySharing: A blockchain-based framework for privacy-preserving and secure data sharing in smart cities, Comput. Secur., vol. 88, p. 101653, 2020.
X. Zhu, Z. Chen, T. Cheng, C. Yang, D. Wu, Y. Wu, and H. Wang, Blockchain for urban governance: Enhancing trust in smart city systems with advanced techniques, Sustain. Cities Soc., vol. 108, p. 105438, 2024.
I. Ahmed, Y. Zhang, G. Jeon, W. Lin, M. R. Khosravi, and L. Qi, A blockchain and artificial intelligence enabled smart IoT framework for sustainable city, Int. J. Intell. Syst., vol. 37, no. 9, pp. 64936507, 2022.
S. Priyanshu, S. Kumar, and S. Garg, Blockchain-Based Data Security, in Digital Forensics and Cyber Crime Investigation: Recent Advances and Future Directions, 2024, p. 17.
B. A. Jnr, W. Sylva, J. K. Watat, and S. Misra, A framework for standardization of distributed ledger technologies for interoperable data integration and alignment in sustainable smart cities, J. Knowl. Econ., vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 1205312096, 2024.
S. K. Singh, Y. Pan, and J. H. Park, Blockchain-enabled secure framework for energy-efficient smart parking in sustainable city environment, Sustain. Cities Soc., vol. 76, p. 103364, 2022.
D. Kundu, Blockchain and trust in a smart city, Environ. Urban. Asia, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 3143, 2019.
M. Asif, Z. Aziz, M. Bin Ahmad, A. Khalid, H. A. Waris, and A. Gilani, Blockchain-based authentication and trust management mechanism for smart cities, Sensors, vol. 22, no. 7, p. 2604, 2022.
E. Dritsas and M. Trigka, Machine Learning for Blockchain and IoT Systems in Smart Cities: A Survey, Future Internet, vol. 16, no. 9, p. 324, 2024.
B. U. I. Khan, K. W. Goh, A. R. Khan, M. F. Zuhairi, and M. Chaimanee, Integrating AI and Blockchain for Enhanced Data Security in IoT-Driven Smart Cities, Processes, vol. 12, no. 9, 2024.
I. Luki, M. Khler, Z. Krpi, and M. varcmajer, Advancing Smart City Sustainability Through Artificial Intelligence, Digital Twin and Blockchain Solutions, Technologies, vol. 13, no. 7, p. 300, 2025.
V. Malik, R. Mittal, D. Mavaluru, B. R. Narapureddy, S. B. Goyal, R. J. Martin, et al., Building a secure platform for digital governance interoperability and data exchange using blockchain and deep learning-based frameworks, IEEE Access, vol. 11, pp. 7011070131, 2023.
S. S. Sefati, R. Craciunescu, B. Arasteh, S. Halunga, O. Fratu, and I. Tal, Cybersecurity in a scalable smart city framework using blockchain and federated learning for internet of things (IoT), Smart Cities, vol. 7, no. 5, pp. 28022841, 2024.
G. Mustafa, W. Rafiq, N. Jhamat, Z. Arshad, and F. A. Rana, Blockchain-based governance models in e-government: a comprehensive framework for legal, technical, ethical and security considerations, Int. J. Law Manag., vol. 67, no. 1, pp. 3755, 2025.
V. Garcia-Font, Conceptual technological framework for smart cities to move towards decentralized and user-centric architectures using DLT, Smart Cities, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 728745, 2021.
M. I. Hossain, T. Steigner, M. I. Hussain, and A. Akther, Enhancing data integrity and traceability in industry cyber physical systems (ICPS) through Blockchain technology: A comprehensive approach, arXiv preprint, arXiv:2405.04837, 2024.
E. M. Roopa Devi, R. Shanthakumari, S. Vinothkumar, and K. R. Balasurya, Introduction to Blockchain Technology for Smart Cities, in Digital Twin and Blockchain for Smart Cities, 2024, pp. 126.
M. Hakimi, K. R. Rahmani, Z. Ezam, and H. Shahbazi, Integrating Blockchain Technology for Secure E-Government Services: Opportunities and Challenges, J. Social Sci. Util. Technol., vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 317335, 2024.
M. I. Alam, S. Khatri, D. K. Shukla, N. K. Misra, S. Satpathy, and M. Hakimi, Blockchain-based coal supply chain management system for thermal power plants, Discov. Comput., vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 132, 2025.
H. Ali, W. J. Buchanan, J. Ahmad, M. Abubakar, M. S. Khan, and I. Wadhaj, TrustShare: Secure and Trusted Blockchain Framework for Threat Intelligence Sharing, Future Internet, vol. 17, no. 7, p. 289, 2025.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Mohammad Nawab Turan, Irshad Ahmed Hashimzai, Mohammad Qaseem Qiam
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
