What kind of spark can the smart city and blockchain shine?

Author: Wang Rui (Beijing News Urban Institute researcher wisdom)

Source: Beijing News

As a core technology, the blockchain has already entered the reality from the technical concept, and has shown great application potential in the field of smart cities, especially information sharing.

On the afternoon of October 24, the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee conducted the 18th collective study on the status quo and trend of blockchain technology development. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized in the presiding that blockchain technology will be an important breakthrough for independent innovation of core technologies. Promote new technological innovations and industrial changes.

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And General Secretary Xi Jinping repeatedly mentioned the application of blockchain technology to the smart city field in the collective study of the Politburo, and promoted the combination of the underlying technical services of the blockchain and the construction of new smart cities, exploring information infrastructure, smart transportation, and energy. The promotion and application of power and other fields will enhance the level of intelligence and precision of urban management. It can be seen that the blockchain will make a big difference in the construction of smart cities.

Blockchain realizes information sharing and ensures data security

"Data" has become a resource under the new situation of rapid development of information technology, especially with the development of the city, accumulating a large amount of huge data. However, due to the competitiveness and exclusivity of data, it is difficult to achieve efficient, orderly, and low-cost flow of urban data across levels, geographies, systems, and departments. When data is exchanged, it is difficult to avoid data leakage. "Island" and data security issues have become the constraints of the construction of new smart cities.

However, blockchain technology has the decentralized, distributed, difficult to tamper with information, security, anonymity and other natural characteristics, which is very suitable for solving the problem of big data sharing difficulties. With the distributed storage of the blockchain, decentralization, point-to-point transmission function, each operation and maintenance management unit of the city is a node, and the generated data can be directly sent to the designated distributed database without data processing through the center. , to achieve direct data transmission, and thus solve the problem of data sharing is difficult.

At the same time, all the data and information of the nodes of each operation and maintenance management unit in the city are transparent and traceable. When data transmission is performed, the data cannot be forged and falsified, because if the tampering needs to be recognized by all nodes, Through the blockchain, the change of the recorded data information can be tracked, and the original information of the data can be traced, thereby further ensuring data security.

▲ data map

"Blockchain + Government Affairs", adding credit to the digital society

Breaking the "information island", opening up data barriers, and improving the efficiency of doing things for the people has always been the country's goal of rectification of government affairs. In the collective study of the Politburo, General Secretary Xi Jinping also emphasized exploring the use of the blockchain data sharing model to achieve joint maintenance and utilization of government data across departments and regions, promoting business synergy, and deepening the “most time to run” reform for the people. Bring a better experience in government service. It can be seen that the blockchain will have a more in-depth application in the field of smart government.

With the sharing and security features of the blockchain, through the form of “blockchain+government”, the information interaction platform that participates in the community is constructed, so that the government departments such as industry and commerce, public security, urban management, and transportation can share information through the blockchain system. Avoid repeated collection of information and reduce the cost of information collection in various departments. At the same time, it will integrate the massive data deposited in the urbanization construction and promote the coordination and sharing of information resources of the city government.

However, the data shared by various government departments and participants will have data security and data leakage concerns, and the blockchain has non-tamperable features. Combined with digital signature means and sandbox technology, malicious nodes or hackers can be prevented from maliciously modifying data. Eliminate concerns about sharing information.

At the same time, combined with the distributed data synchronous backup mechanism, and the traceability of data, there is no need to worry about data loss, and the pursuit of privacy or illegal use of information. Most importantly, the anonymity of the blockchain provides multiple guarantees for the information security and privacy of the participants.

▲ data map

"Blockchain + People's Livelihood": Smarter Public Service

General Secretary Xi Jinping repeatedly mentioned the blockchain in the specific application fields of smart cities in the collective study of the Politburo. He proposed to explore the application of “blockchain+” in the field of people's livelihood and actively promote blockchain technology in education. The application of employment, pension, precision poverty alleviation, medical health, commodity anti-counterfeiting, food safety, public welfare, social assistance, etc., to provide the public with more intelligent, more convenient and better public services.

In the medical field of people's livelihood, the blockchain can be applied to secure storage and sharing of medical data, medical process reform, and drug supply chain supervision and drug identification.

For example, in the digital management of patient health records, blockchain technology can create a safe and flexible electronic health record (EHR) that can even trace key drugs, blood, and organ sources to make public health more transparent, which is also medical Insurance claims provide a more reliable basis. For the residents' medical health-related information, the application type of "private key" can be used to grant rights to the corresponding nodes, providing multiple protections for the secure sharing and use of information.

In terms of urban governance, blockchain technology allows citizens and urban departments to participate in urban co-management and open governance with low time and economic costs. At the same time, the distributed storage of the blockchain can realize the smart contract. According to the set agreement, once the conditions are met, the contract will trigger the execution. This can be applied to the government automatic approval process, tax filing, civil registration, etc., to simplify the government process. Most importantly, the decentralization and traceability of the blockchain helps track asset usage, prevent government corruption, and increase government transparency.

As a core technology, the blockchain has already entered the reality from the technical concept, and has shown great application potential in the field of smart cities, especially information sharing.

The political bureau collectively learned to strengthen the blockchain positioning and direction as an opportunity to seize the blockchain technology integration and function expansion, and promote the blockchain to be more extensive in smart cities such as government affairs, people's livelihood and urban governance. With more in-depth application, new smart city construction will usher in more breakthroughs.

Editor: Fan Nana Proofreading: Guo Li

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