Applied Soft Computing 106 (2021) 107274

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Applied Soft Computing

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/asoc

Smart water conservation through a machine learning and

blockchain-enabled decentralized edge computing network
∗
Tanvi Thakur a , Aryan Mehra b , Vikas Hassija a , Vinay Chamola c,d , , Rallapalli Srinivas e,f ,
Karunesh K. Gupta c , Ajit Pratap Singh e
a
Department of CS and IT, Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida, 201304, India
b
Department of Computer Science, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Rajasthan, 333031, India
c
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Rajasthan, 333031, India
d
APPCAIR, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Rajasthan, 333031, India
e
Department of Civil Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Rajasthan, 333031, India
f
Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering, University of Minnesota, 55108, USA

article info a b s t r a c t

Article history: Forecasting precise water usage corresponding to various beneficial usages is important for optimal
Received 5 November 2020 and sustainable planning and management of water resources. Due to rapid population growth, there
Received in revised form 28 January 2021 is an urgent need for devising water saving solutions. In this paper, we propose a blockchain based
Accepted 27 February 2021
incentivized edge computing framework for water saving using soft computing methodologies. The
Available online 19 March 2021
framework facilitates decision makers in creating awareness among people about water savings in a
Keywords: easily understandable scientific way. Our incentivized blockchain based model uses edge computing
Edge computing at the house nodes of the network to predict the actual usage of a particular household in the
Blockchain locality based on several factors such as number of people, average income of family, profession of
Machine learning the members and previous water demands. By using Feed Forward Networks and Mixture Density
Water conservation
Networks, we predict the water usage in terms of input factors and historical usage respectively,
thus incorporating machine computing into the framework. With the two values from these methods,
a comparison is made with the actual amount of water used by the householders. This research
proposes deployment of the smart contract on the blockchain network for efficient and accurate
reward distribution. Incentives and rewards are given in the blockchain network to houses with lesser
consumption and penalties are imposed when usage crosses predicted and historic usage. The model
ensures that accurate incentives are provided to the people in order to motivate them to avoid wastage
of water. Results show that the methods used in our work perform better than other relevant networks
on a self-synthesized dataset. The proposed methods converge well and show higher spatio-temporal
accuracy.
© 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction pollution, drinking water unavailability, inadequate sanitation,

Water is one of the most important natural resources required
for human survival. It is well known that although 97 percent
of earth is surrounded by water, only 3 percent is available
as freshwater. Water usage is on the rise in various sectors of
the country [1]. Therefore, sustainable water resources manage-
ment is necessary to meet the growing demand for water. Water
∗ Corresponding author at: Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineer-
ing, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Rajasthan, 333031, India
(vinay.chamola@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in).
E-mail addresses: tanvithakur1999@gmail.com (T. Thakur),
f20170077@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in (A. Mehra), vikas.hassija@jiit.ac.in
(V. Hassija), ralla008@umn.edu (R. Srinivas), kgupta@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in
(K.K. Gupta), aps@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in (A.P. Singh).
open waste dumping, loss of forest cover, population growth
are some of the problems that many parts of India face [2].
Water wastage at an alarming rate is one of the serious concerns.
In the past, researchers have put considerable efforts to devise
solutions to control the alarming increase in consumption of
water resources [3]. Considering the utility of water for various
beneficial usages such as industrial, domestic and agriculture,
its conservation is of utmost importance [4]. Water services are
aimed not only at meeting increasing demand through expanded
supply capacity but also at influencing future demand to ensure
efficient, cost-effective and environmentally sustainable water
services [5].
This paper discusses a blockchain based incentive model us-
ing the soft computing components namely artificial neural net-
works. Neural network is used for finding the real-time solutions

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asoc.2021.107274
1568-4946/© 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
T. Thakur, A. Mehra, V. Hassija et al.
in the existing scenarios for the efficient and useful data ex-
traction [6]. Blockchain is a decentralized ledger system where
digital files are grouped into blocks, such as transaction lists or
contractual agreements, and stored in a distributed database [7]
. Complex cryptographic layers ensure a high degree of pro-
tection, making transaction records immutable and allowing for
peer-to- peer trade without having to have trusted central au-
thorities [8]. In the recent past Blockchain has found applica-
tions in various domains ranging from 5G network management,
mobile edge computing, VANETs, crowd funding, supply chain,
managing government workflows etc.[9–15]. In this paper, we
devise an efficient solution to water wastage by building a model
that provides a simplified framework to the householders in a
particular community minimize water wastage by utilizing the
available water efficiently as the part of the blockchain net-
work [16], where the customer can integrate the data and identity
anonymity techniques with the network [17].
A unique feature of this framework is its ability to use of
blockchain with edge computing integrated architectures to facil-
itate water savings. Recent research has shown that such systems
function better by decentralizing the data access and storage [18].
The use of a smart contract in blockchain is inherently decentral-
ized. This gives ample opportunity to use sensors or IoT devices
at the house nodes itself to compute the reward and punishment
of the household based on its previous time series data.
The water saving technique with blockchain includes incor-
porating blockchain technology into environmental protection,
including thorough transparency in mitigating knowledge asym-
metry which promotes stronger market structures in resource
allocation [19]. Blockchain has always been an effective tool
for such kind of contracts. It ensures heavy penalties against
those who are not following desired rules required for water
savings [20]. Blockchain network uses distributed storage rather
than central storage. There is no central governor of the network ,
which means that consensus can be achieved without centralized
control. The right and responsibility of any node is equal, and
all nodes with maintenance feature will maintain the data in the
network [21]. This data from the nodes is used as the input to our
prediction model. The following points highlight the major steps
and processes involved in the network:
• The model used as the base model for prediction is the
Feed-Forward Neural Network. Neural networks have been
implemented successfully in various fields including water
resource management [22]. Here the demand of the various
houses in the particular locality is predicted. This is done at
the house node itself because of the decentralized structure
of the network.
• Based on the various factors, the consumption value is pre-
dicted using feed-forward neural network and the value
is compared with the historical value that is calculated
using random probability distribution model for neural net-
works [23].
• Based on these two values and the amount of water sup-
plied, the incentive system is being prepared in blockchain
which award good incentive to houses using less water than
predicted, and on the other hand applies penalty to houses
using more water than predicted [24].
The proposed work has several contributions in the field of
water conservation using soft computing and edge computing
as the basis for the network. Some of the major advantages are
highlighted below:
• The work is one of the first to use soft computing ap-
proaches along with machine learning and blockchain for
conservation of water. The use of SOS to train the FNN is
novel in its approach and effective without using typical
backpropagation or gradient descent.
2
Applied Soft Computing 106 (2021) 107274
• The network provides the public with one of the most
important human factors for conserving water — monetary
incentive through blockchain networks.
• The proposed work is tested extensively on curated dataset,
and outperforms the other related methods with smooth
convergence as reflected in Table 2 and 4 .
2. Related work
Research has been done in the field of smart water saving
using blockchain technologies. Many works have shown how
effective architectures can leverage two layers of the edge com-
puting networks to integrate them with the security and decen-
tralization of blockchain networks [25].
Neural network lies in the layout class ‘‘black-box’’. Such mod-
els do not need comprehensive insights into the internal func-
tions between inputs and outputs [26]. The techniques of soft
computing are nowadays being used successfully in many com-
mercial, domestic, and industrial applications. Artificial neural
networks have an inherent ability to learn and recognize highly
non linear relationships [27], and then organize dispersed data
into a nonlinear model. Many researchers have addressed neural
network history, capacities, forms, structure and learning algo-
rithms [28]. ANNs are modelling approaches that could be used
in predicting the impacts of deteriorating water quality on drink-
ing water purification processes [29]. Some studies address the
development and use of mathematical models based on artificial
neural networks, fitted with experimental data on a laboratory
scale [30]. Some applied backpropagation to predict the water
consumption [31]. The findings showed improved prediction after
use of the technique highlighted in [32].
Time and again various studies were conducted on prediction
models. Soft computing is a technique where the approximate
model of the problem is available and the proposed solution is
also based on the approximate reasoning techniques. To forecast,
three types of models were used including regression model, time
series model and ANN model [33], concluding that ANN models
are good for prediction of values related to water consumption
as well as treatment. Regression models have historically been
used in forecasting rates of water usage. Some early works in
the field used temperature and rainfall as the weather attributes
for such regression models [34,35]. Though several models were
proposed as predictors, a study states the importance of each
input feature in the model for water consumption [36]. The
research in this field includes monthly and daily prediction using
the Feed-Forward Neural Networks (FNNs) and the Recurrent
Neural Networks (RNNs) [37].
The forecasting models of water demand can be divided into
two types [38] viz. deterministic and stochastic. The first one
is used for handling decision variables known with certainty
whereas the second one is used when decision variables are ran-
dom in nature. For example, the deterministic models are used for
the primary approaches include multiple, simple, semi-log, and
log–log regressions mainly the short and medium scales [39–42].
The stochastic models are more commonly used for large-scale
models, such as moving average, auto-regressive, auto-regressive
moving average, auto-regressive integrated moving average, arti-
ficial neural networks (ANN), fuzzy control and supply.
This paper proposes an approach of an incentivized blockchain
based model where the daily predictions are done by the su-
pervised Feed-Forward Neural Network [43]. The training of the
model is done using an efficient algorithm named Symbiotic Or-
ganism Search [44]. The historical data is predicted using the ran-
dom probability distribution model for neural networks named
Mixture Density Network [45]. This value is then added to the
prediction from FNN and final historical dataset is prepared.
Based on the above values, the incentive system is formulated
in blockchain. The next section describes the overall procedure
adopted in this study.
T. Thakur, A. Mehra, V. Hassija et al.
Fig. 1. Proposed edge computing and blockchain integrated framework for smart water saving and distribution system.
3. System model
Fig. 1 illustrates the working of proposed model where all the
houses in the locality belong to the same blockchain network. The
nodes in the blockchain are the houses in the locality and the
transaction from each node refers to the water consumption of
that particular house. Fig. 1 shows the detailed working of the
model.
The steps involved in the full working of the model are as
follows:
1. Whenever new people shift to the locality, they are made
to register on the blockchain network by entering all the
details like-members in the household, average income of
the family, age of the members, gender of the members,
profession of the members (which includes either office
work, raising livestock or farming), number of water using
equipment in the house, awareness of family members
regarding water saving, health conditions of the mem-
bers and the previous water demands. The water usage is
tracked using standard equipment that enables data to be
extracted, computed and stored at the edge of the network
— the houses themselves.
3
Applied Soft Computing 106 (2021) 107274
2. After creating an account, each account is linked to the
specific account address, public and private key collection.
The data that every user shares on the network is pass-
word protected using the assigned private key to avoid
non-repetition.
3. To obtain the regular use, the account information in the
network is transferred to the neural feed-forward network
for prediction of water use.
4. The output from Feed Forward Neural Network, which
predicts the daily usage is fed to the Mixture Density Net-
work for estimation of the historical water consumption by
random probability distribution.
5. The probability estimates of both the models — one pre-
dicting the daily usage and other predicting the previous
water demands are calculated. Both of these values are
compared with the current consumption of the household.
6. If the current consumption is less than the predicted daily
usage as well as the predicted previous water demand, a
considerable amount of incentive is provided. If the current
consumption lies between both the predicted values, then
less amount of incentive is provided, and if the consump-
tion value lies beyond the predicted values, a penalty will
T. Thakur, A. Mehra, V. Hassija et al. Applied Soft Computing 106 (2021) 107274

be charged. This entire calculation takes place at the edge Table 1

node of the blockchain network. Input values.

7. As future extension of our work, we will try for more Number of members (NP)
Average age of members (Aage)
accurate predictions plus some changes in the blockchain Average income of the members (AI)
system where it has more security and integrity. The mod-
Male
els used in the paper for prediction might fail in some Gender of the members(α) Female
cases. Overall, a more efficient algorithm can be designed Child
for the incentive system to motivate people to follow all Farming
the rules effectively. Profession of the members(ω)
Livestock raising
Work from home
Our model provides the speed and convenience of an edge Office going
computing network, combined with the safety and reliability of Number of equipment in house using water (Eq)
the blockchain smart contract [46–52]. This is required for effec- Awareness in family regarding water saving techniques (γ )
tive expansion, if the network to bigger localities and monetary Health conditions of family (π )

reward based incentives are provided. The use of machine learn-

ing algorithms provides the necessary intelligence for predictive
1 if male
{
analysis and neutrality in reward system. The subsequent section
discusses the proposed network model and the mathematics Genderk = 1 if female (6)
behind the water consumption in detail. 0.8 if child
∑N
Professioni
4. Proposed network model ωk = i=1
(7)
N⎧
1 if farming
Considering the houses in the locality H = {H1 , H2 , H3 , . . . ,
⎪
1 if livestock raising
⎨
Hi , . . . , Hn } where n is the number of houses in the locality Professionk = (8)
⎪0.8 if work from home
that are registered in the blockchain network. All the houses are 0.5
⎩
if office going
made to register on the network. In our work two models are
used — Feed-forward Neural Network for daily prediction and Eq −
→ Average number of equipment in house using water
{
Mixture Density Network Model for historical data prediction. 1 if aware
Fig. 2 clearly shows the various components of the model. γk = (9)
0 if not aware

4.1. Feed forward neural network for daily prediction {

1 if healthy
πi = (10)
0.5 if sick
Considering a day where the input of the particular household
is taken. The inputs are taken as a vector with all the fields. Each ∑N
house, Hk , feeds its information vector to the model, λk , which πi
πk = i=1
(11)
can be represented using: N
All these values are given as input to the model in the form
λk = {NPk , AIk , Aagek , αk , ωk , Eqk , γk , πk } (1)
of a vector. Then all this information is fed to the hidden layer
where NPk − → Number of members in the house Hk , where it is being processed to give the required output.
AIk − → Average income of the family Hk , Hidden input may have as many layers as we need in our
Aagek − → Average age of the members Hk , with Agei referring to network. The number of hidden layers affect the error calculation
the member age in our network. Each connection between an input layer and a
αk − → Average value of gender of the members Hk , with αi hidden layer is connected by a weight and also has a value called
referring to a member’s age, bias. Then this hidden layer connects to the output layer which
ωk − → Average value of profession of the members Hk , in turn gives the output.
Eqk − → Average number of equipment in the house using water
Hk ,
γk − → Overall binary awareness of the family regarding saving 4.2. Training of a neural network
water (installing the leak-proof pipeline etc.)Hk ,
πk − → Average health conditions of the members of the house Hk ., For executing any machine learning or deep learning model it
with member values denoted as πi [53] is necessary to first train the model before deploying it to make
Table 1 shows the summarizing of the parameters of input predictions on new data. For FNN the input data include 8 input
nodes. variables- (1) number of members (NP) (2) average income of
The information vector of a particular house is fed as an input the family (AI) (3) average age of members (Aage) (4) gender of
to the feed-forward neural network where N = Total number of members (α ) (5) profession of the members (ω) (6) number of
members of the house equipment in the house using water (Eq) (7) awareness of family
regarding water saving (γ ) (8) health conditions of the members
NPk = Numberofmembers (2) (π ). Our output will predict that how much amount of water
∑N will be utilized by this house. The value will be normalized and
i=1 Incomei
AIk = (3) between 0 to 1.
N Symbiotic organisms search (SOS) is used for the FNN training.
∑N
i=1 Agei SOS shall simultaneously evaluate the set of weights and bias
Aagek = (4)
N in order to minimize the overall error of one FNN and its cor-
∑N
Genderi
responding accuracy through network training. That means the
αk = i=1
(5) FNN structure is fixed at the time of prediction and usage in
N
4
T. Thakur, A. Mehra, V. Hassija et al.
Algorithm 1 Training a FNN using Symbiotic Organism Search
(SOS) Algorithm
Input: Specified number of organisms (i.e the weights in our
space) E , Number of training dataset N , Number of testing
datasets N , Number of input neurons I , Number of output neu-
rons O, Termination Criteria T , Formulation of the number of
hidden neurons based on input and output neurons s specified
in the above formulas. H
Output: Final output value between 0 to 1, θfinal
1: Mutualism phase begins
2: Pick one organism at random Xj where Xj ̸ = Xi
3: Formulate the benefit factor and mutual vector of mutual
relationship using the Equation 14
4: Change the Xi and Xj organisms based on mutual interaction
relationship as given in Equation 12 and 13. Calculate the
fitness value of modified organisms.
5: if modified organism is fitter than before then consider
transformed species and proceed to step 7
6: else keep preceding species and proceed to next step with
the preceding species
7: Commensalism phase begins
8: Select one Xj organism at random, where Xj ̸ = Xi
9: Change the Xj organism with the aid of Xi according to the
Equation 15 and measure changed organism fitness value
10: if modified organism is fitter than before then consider
transformed species and proceed to step 12
11: else keep preceding species and proceed to step 12
12: Parasitism phase begins
13: Select one Xj organism at random, where Xj ̸ = Xi
14: Build an organism Xi parasite (parasite vector) by duplicating
organism Xi and modifying randomly selected dimensions
with uniform random number.
15: Calculate the fitness value of modified vector.
16: if vector parasite is fitter than Xj then Xj is replaced by
parasite vector
17: else hold Xj and disable vector parasite
18: Check whether the termination criteria is met
19: If yes then you can achieve the optimal solution, if no then
switch to step 1 and again formulate Xj and Xi in mutualism
phase
the entire system architecture. There are three phases in which
the algorithm trains the dataset-mutualism phase, commensalism
phase and parasitism phase according to the given equations.
Xinew = Xi + α (Xbest − MV ∗BF1 ) (12)
Xjnew = Xj + β (Xbest − MV ∗BF2 ) (13)
(
Xi + Xj
) according to parasite vector.
MV = (14)
2 4.6. Mixture density network for predicting the historical data
Here BF1 and BF2 are the benefit factor values which are de-
termined randomly as either 1 or 2. MV represents the mutual
vector. The following equation gives the Commensalism phase.
Xinew = Xi + δ Xbest − Xj
( )
(15)
where δ represents a random number in [−1, 1]. And Xbest is the
highest degree of adaptation organism.
4.3. The feed forward neural networks architecture
While designing a feed forward neural network, the structure
must be calculated depending on the number of layers and num-
ber of neurons in the input, hidden and output. The greater the
5
Applied Soft Computing 106 (2021) 107274
number of layers and nodes hidden, the more complicated the
network becomes.
Hidden − nodes = 2 ∗ Input − nodes + 1 (16)
When using Symbiotic Search Organisms Algorithm to opti-
mize network weights and bias, each organism’s dimension is
calculated as the sum of weights in the input-hidden junction,
hidden-output junction with the respective biases in the nodes.
4.4. Fitness function
Through Symbiotic Search Organism Algorithm, each organism
is tested and accepted according to its fitness value. The calcula-
tion is done by providing the vector of weights and biases to Feed
Forward Neural Network as an input and then the Mean Squared
Error is formulated using the training dataset based on the neural
network prediction. Here j and ĵ are the real and approximate
values based on the model being proposed, and R is the number
of data in the training datasets.
R
1∑
MSE = (j − ĵ)2 (17)
R
i=1
4.5. Evaluation of the performance by SOS
To explain the current data and to determine how unknown
data will behave we classify our data. Apart from the MSE criteria,
accuracy rate was used for the classification problem. This rate
measures the classifier ’s ability by producing exact results which
can be calculated as follows:
R̃
Accuracy = (18)
R
where R̃ indicates the number of correctly classified objects by the
classifier and R indicates the number of objects in the dataset.
This is the basic algorithm for the training of the model. The
input is fed to the model and then the various phases work. Like
in the above algorithm we use six different phases-
1. Reading the datasets.
2. Ecosystem initialization.
3. Identifying the best organism Xbest .
4. Then comes the mutualism phase where the first set of
organisms is observed and decision is made according to
mutual vector and benefit factor.
5. After this is the commensalism phase where the another
set of organisms is observed and selected based on the
fitness value.
6. Then is the parasitism phase where the decision is made
A Mixture Density Network (MDN) is an interesting model
built within the general framework of neural networks [54]. It
works best for theory of prediction of probability of the super-
vised learning problems. MDN is a class of models obtained by
combining a standard neural network with a mixture of distribu-
tions. It is a framework that helps us formulate the conditional
probability distribution p(y|x) as a mixture of distributions. Input
x here is a prediction that comes from Feed Forward Neural
Network. The advantage and rationale for using the Mixture
Density Network is that it is one of the few methods that give
the prediction with probability of water usage by the different
households, which is a continuous quantity. Moreover, not all
T. Thakur, A. Mehra, V. Hassija et al. Applied Soft Computing 106 (2021) 107274

Fig. 2. Working of the model.

water consumption distributions are linear, or predictable by a joint distribution over the latent variable z:
single model alone. Using MDN gives us the best theoretical limit ∫
to accuracy as well [54]. MDN also has the capability to take p(y|x) = p(y, z|x)dz
the output value of FNN as input, making the prediction more ∑
= p(y, z|x)
concrete and coherent.
z
Here we work on the Gaussian distribution function, because ∑ (20)
prediction of water trend is most common in Gaussian(normal) = p(z)p(y|x, z)
z
distribution. Our neural net will create a Gaussian or Normal Mix- ∑
πk (x)N y|µk (x), I σk2 (x)
( )
ture Model, which is a standardized linear functionality of K Gaus- =
k
sian distributions. Eq. (19) shows the conditional probability of
Gaussian distribution which is used for further computations [54]. The advantage here is that we now formulate our intuitive ideas
The mixture of distributions is depicted by this equation. Formally in a simple, anticipated manner.
the probability can be expressed under the condition p(y|x) as: Apart from this process we need to add our model parameters
∑ specifically and extract a successful and efficient loss. Till now,
πk (x)N y|µk (x), I σk2 (x) we have discussed and formulated our model outputs as x func-
( )
p(y|x) = (19)
k tions without especially mentioning any model parameters. Let
us place w now as our vector trainable model parameters and
where π (x) is a normalized k coefficient mixing vector as a re-institute our model as a function of both x and w, or more
function of x, and the expression N y|µk (x), I σk2 (x) is a Gaussian
( )
specifically as a function of x specified by w. The conditional p(yx)
component density with means µk (x) and variance σk2 (x), both of distribution can then be changed to especially update it. Now we
which are also functions of x. need to update w as-
The π (x) represents a probability distribution vector for our ∫
function. Gaussian(normal) component portion of the distribution p(y|x, w) = p(y, z|x, w)dz
can be formulated by this process. In order to do the formulation ∑ (21)
πk (x, w)N y|µk (x, w), I σk2 (x, w)
( )
=
of the component, we must add a variable z called as a latent
k
variable that is one-hot encoded with possible K states, and then
π(x) represents the p(z) distribution. More precisely, we could Our trainable parameters of model w are now part of our prob-
abilistic method. Because of this, we may intuitively change w
define p (zk = 1) = π k(x), that is π k(x) as the possibility of z
to optimize our p(yx, w) conditional distribution for any obser-
being in the k state, which can be defined as the fundamental
vation given of y and x. To do this, we have to first improve
probability of z being in the k state. In view of the above calcula-
our conditional distribution to include the full (X, Y) dataset to
tions and probabilities, we can validate our idea of calculating the which we can accessed by defining it as p(Y|X, w) Then, we use
conditional Gaussian part such as p(yx, z), in which we condition Bayes theorem to propose some more probabilistic entities that
the y distribution to both x and our new variable z. Keeping in will help us to define our loss function efficiently as:
mind our current situation p(z) and p(yx, z) distributions, we may
p(w|Y, X)p(Y) = p(Y, w|X) = p(Y|X, w)p(w)
construct a joint distribution p(y, zx) between y and z, and then posterior × evidence = joint distribution = (22)
formulate our conditional distribution p(yx) by depreciating this likelihood × prior
6
T. Thakur, A. Mehra, V. Hassija et al. Applied Soft Computing 106 (2021) 107274

Table 2
Comparison of MDN with other models.
Null model Linear model DNN MDN
MSE (Mean Squared Error) 2.280 0.200 0.200 0.200
NLL (Negative Log-Likelihood) 1.875 1.200 1.200 −0.334

which leads to-

p(Y|X, w)p(w)
p(w|Y, X) =
p(Y)
(23)
p(w|Y, X) ∝ p(Y|X, w)p(w)
posterior ∝ likelihood × prior
here we realize the proof of the concept is not a function of
w, parameters and would therefore be unnecessary to use that
during our optimization. We should now aim to efficiently find
Fig. 3. Prediction of the water utilized by 10 sample houses using feed-forward
the w, posterior probability, and thus define our loss function
neural network and mixture density network.
L(w) in terms of the likelihood and prior:

−1
L(w) = log( likelihood × prior ) loss with regard to the actual model. The output value from the
N
−1 Mixture Density Network is taken and added to the predicted
= log(p(Y|X, w)p(w)) values of water usage from Feed-Forward Neural Network. This
N
N ( (∫ )) value is taken as the historical data of water consumption by a
−1 ∑ household in the locality.
= log p (yn , zn |xn , w) dzn + log(p(w))
N
n=1
N
( ( 4.8. Evaluating the final results
−1 ∑ ∑
= log πk (xn , w) N (yn |µk (xn , w) ,
N In the end we have the following values-
n=1 k
))
• One from the Feed-Forward Neural Network. This is the
I σk2 (xn , w)
)
+ log(p(w)) daily predicted value of the particular household in the
locality. Let this be V 1
(24) • Second from the Mixed Density Network. This value is added
to the value V 1 from the Feed Forward Model and then the
where we used algorithm to transform a probability result into
final value gives the historical data that is the previous water
a log summation probability of numerical consistency, negation
of minimization rather than maximization, and the summation demands of the house V 2
summed to make the function irreducible to batch sizes. By • Third is the value of the water which is provided by the
explicitly reducing L(w) w.r.t. w we can now improve our model water supply plant to all the houses V 3. This is the actual
parameters w. Here we assume a ambiguous and random prior water consumption.
to p(w) = 1, which simplifies our loss function to:
In the end all these values are compared in the smart contract
N
( ) deployed on ethereum and an incentive value or a penalty value
−1 ∑ ∑
πk (xn , w) N yn |µk (xn , w) , I σk2 (xn , w) is calculated. The criteria for computation of the final incentive
( )
L(w) = log
N or penalty in the smart contract is as follows-
n=1 k

Table 2 shows the comparison of MDN with other models. [54]
4.7. Training the model
For training first we need to prepare the dataset from the Feed
Forward Neural outputs. We construct a model where xi is the
input and a value outi is generated, which can be interpreted as
the mean criteria of a Normal distribution for yi according to the
given function.
Y = X + 0.3 sin(2π X) + noise
. We generate a training dataset as follows — we generate a ma-
trix X of n observations of a 1-dimensional variable x by sampling
uniformly over the interval [0, 1), and then generate a corre-
sponding matrix Y of n target observations of a 1 -dimensional
variable y by computing. The noise is the vector of n uniform val-
ues sampled over the interval [-0.1,0.1). We can then formulate a
loss function as the negative probability of log assuming a Normal
distribution, and optimize the parameters of our model for this
(25) • If the house uses water less than the predicted value V 1
and V 2 then the incentive is provided which is equal to the
difference of the water consumed and water supplied V 3.
• If the house uses water between the two predicted values
V 1 and V 2 then the incentive is provided which is equal
to the difference between the water consumed and water
supplied V 3. This will be lower than the previous case.
• If the house uses water beyond the predicted values V 1 and
V 2 then penalty is applied which is equal to the extra water
used that is difference between the water consumed and
water supplied V 3.
(26)
5. Numerical analysis and results
5.1. Simulation settings
We have used the Feed Forward Neural Network for the pre-
diction of the daily consumption on our dataset. We have im-
plemented this in python using pandas, numpy and networks.
The values are calculated keeping in mind the minimum error
7
T. Thakur, A. Mehra, V. Hassija et al.
Fig. 4. Fitness values of the best predicted organism over the number of
iterations..
Fig. 5. Comparison of MDN with other neural network models.
rate and maximum efficiency. Firstly our training dataset con-
tains 30 data points which are synthesized manually with full
experimentation. The training is done using the soft computing
algorithm which is SOS algorithm. This algorithm helps us decide
the number of hidden layers (17 in our case) plus the weights
of the connections between input and hidden as well as hidden
and output and also the biases so that we have minimum mean
squared error MSE (0.0124 in our case). Our testing dataset con-
tains 10 data points which are further used to obtain the best
results with most accuracy. Another prediction of water usage
by different houses is done using the Mixed Density Network.
We have used three python libraries here namely — Edward,
Keras and Tensorflow. In case of water prediction we have taken
Gaussian or Normal distribution. Fig. 3 shows the predicted water
values of the different houses using both Feed-Forward Network
and Mixture Density Networks. These two values obtained can be
combined and compared to produce actual results. Taking these
two values plus the actual water supply we predict the incentive
or penalty amount. Each of the node or the house has its own
ethereum wallet(smart contract wallet) with some funds through
which they can interact with the smart contract on ethereum
network. The smart contract decides the amount of penalty or
incentive to be provided to the single user depending on its water
consumption.
8
Applied Soft Computing 106 (2021) 107274
5.2. Performance evaluation
We select the weights that give the best possible fitness value
through SOS training mechanism for the neural network. Fig. 4
shows the change in the MSE values over the number of iter-
ations, thus proving that our method converges well. Extensive
dataset synthesis and testing has shown that the training con-
verged with a fitness or MSE loss of 0.0124. When this computa-
tion is carried out locally, within the house node of the blockchain
network, the results will not just have the advantage of the
above mentioned accuracy but also the speed of edge computing
networks.
Fig. 5 shows the comparison of the Mixture Density Network
(MDN) model with A-MDN and R-MDN model [55]. The figure
clearly shows that during the course of time MDN shows the max-
imum accuracy among other models. So clearly this is the best
model to be used in historical prediction of water consumption
of the houses. The random probability distribution model used in
this paper is the most efficient for our dataset.
6. Conclusion
In this manuscript, we propose a blockchain and edge com-
puting integrated incentive based framework for smart water
saving and distribution. Since the houses themselves are the
nodes of the blockchain network, the computation takes place at
the edge of the network and provides fast incentivized method of
water conservation. Various steps involved include the accurate
prediction of daily water demands using a Feed Forward Neural
Network that uses many factors to predict water consumption.
The FNN is trained using a soft computing approach called Symbi-
otic Organism Search (SOS). We also use Mixed Density Network
for historical prediction of the house. Together, they give the
best results with high accuracy. The houses using excess water
than predicted values are charged with penalties and those using
the water efficiently get the incentives through the blockchain
network. This system motivates the people to save water and
prevent any wastage. The novelty of this work is reflected in
this integration of blockchain and water consumption prediction
model in a single framework. Blockchain ensures security and
timely payment of penalties and incentives. Overall, this sys-
tem is unique and provides an efficient framework for optimal
water usage. Furthermore, the work lays future groundwork for
researchers to create innovative designs and networks that in-
volve using inexpensive soft-computing techniques to conserve
the environment around us. Using sensors and ML or blockchain
integrated services help in creating incentives for the people
while making sure about the effectiveness of the implementation
of applications like water consumption, medical diagnosis, elec-
tricity consumption etc . Future work may even further explore
more input factors for the FNN to make the model more accurate.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Tanvi Thakur: Methodology, Software, Writing - original draft.
Aryan Mehra: Data curation, Formal Analysis, Writing - original
draft. Vikas Hassija: Project administration, Validation. Vinay
Chamola: Conceptualization, Supervision, Resources. Rallapalli
Srinivas: Conceptualization, Software, Validation. Karunesh K.
Gupta: Writing - reviewing and editing, Funding acquisition. Ajit
Pratap Singh: Writing - reviewing and editing, Funding acquisi-
tion.
T. Thakur, A. Mehra, V. Hassija et al.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgement
This work was partially supported by DST Interdisciplinary
Cyber Physical System (DST-ICPS), India project grant titled ‘‘De-
velopment of Cyber Physical System based Smart Water Grid
for Community usage’’ (Minutes OM No: DST/ICPS/PAMC/Cluster
(CPSR)/2018 dated 13th March 2018 and Sanction OM:
DST/ICPS/Cluster (Cyber Physical Systems)/2018(G) dated 13th
March 2019).
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