Proposing a System for Collaborative Traffic Information Gathering and Sharing Incentivized by Blockchain Technology

In the context of transportation technologies for smart city, recently, self-driving and connected cars have been studied with increased attention to realize more efficient and safer transportation. On the other hand, applications of blockchain and its Layer 2 technologies to IoT and cyber-physical systems have been considered for achieving sharing economy. The blockchain explores new incentive-based value exchange system using reliable data structure with resistance to information tampering despite the absence of reliable central control. In this paper, we propose a distributed system for collaborative traffic information gathering and sharing incentivized by blockchain technology. I consider that beacon devices are deployed along road segments by many and unspecified users. These devices collaboratively estimate traffic count and status, and also detect traffic jam and accidents to gather and share them coordinated by the incentive from its digital currency. After introducing an idea of how to realize this system, I demonstrate numerical simulations to evaluate some preliminary results for how the proposed system works and responds to real-time traffic conditions, such as traffic accident and jam in the road segment.