Blockchain Application in Emergency Materials Distribution Under Disaster: An Architectural Design and Investigation

ABSTRACT

In recent years, natural disasters have been raging around the world, among which COVID-19, a public health pandemic, is still spreading all over the world. Emergency material distribution (EMD) in rescue work is facing serious challenges in the term of coordination, efficiency, traceability, identification, credibility, and security, privacy, and transparency. To address the issues, this paper develops a framework based on blockchain technology so that the operation information of EMD can be safely and promptly transmitted to the blockchain system. The scheme could achieve to query, track and record the operation status of emergency material collection, vehicle scheduling, inventory management, relief material allocation and others in real time. By using this framework, a case study on medical rescue materials distribution for COVID-19 is provided to illustrate how blockchain technology and Internet of Things (IoT) technology can be effective. The research provides insights on using the disruptive blockchain technology to effectively coordinate the deployment of emergency supplies, vehicles and personnel, and improve the transparency and credibility of rescue work to minimize the losses caused by disasters. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.