Project Id: 2019CSEPID031

Project
On
“Disaster Management Using Blockchain”
Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirement

For the degree of

Bachelor of Technology
in
Computer Science and Engineering
By

Richa Mishra (1902900100133)

Mansi Singh (1902900100092)
Mukul Sharma (1902900100100)

Under the Supervision of

Prof. Sanjeev Kumar
Asst. Professor, CSE

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

ABES Institute of Technology, Ghaziabad

Affiliated to
Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University, Uttar Pradesh
Lucknow
(Odd Semester, 2022-23)
 ABSTRACT
Blockchain is a distributed database technology where data can be secured with cryptographic function
and provide transparency to the system. It has been extensively used in different use cases like financial
instruments, e-governance, supply chain and many more. We focus on how blockchain can be used as an
application during emergencies. Because, there is no such integrated information system so far
developed for disaster management and control for effective decision making. Conceptual model has
been developed by reviewing various literature papers from disaster and blockchain streams. We try to
address collaborating the stakeholders to one single platform where the information sharing and storing
are reliable and consistent. This paper provide a system model for various user scenario during disaster
situations. The model claim a holistic view and provide a solution to the disaster events.

Disaster response and relief efforts require effective handling of resources and timely impact of the
goods at the disaster affected areas with least processing time. Time required for goods to travel from
origin to affected region has a few components but the one which can be reduced most is the time taken
to handle the legalities and paperwork. We propose a resource management system to tackle the issue of
extensive paperwork for deployment of relief material through a blockchain based web application. This
acts as a communication channel for a consortium of relief enterprises and organizations, a gateway for
the populous to donate goods and for volunteers to make their services available to the various non-profit
organizations on the platform.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

–––
S No. Title Page No.

1. Introduction 4

2. Literature Survey 5

3. Problem Statement 6

4. Proposed Methodology 7-9

5. Conclusion 10

6. References 11

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 INTRODUCTION
Crisis related information is very crucial for any effective decision making. Securing the information
against unauthorized access point is much more important. Blockchain technology is a secured database
technology which offers distributed data storage, point-to-point transmission, consensus mechanism, and
encryption algorithms[1]. It is widely applicable in various fields like healthcare supply chain[2],
financial services[3], IoT, privacy rights, e- governance, etc. where there are multiple parties involved.
Blockchain can help the government and society to a large extent during emergencies. Government of
various countries takes initiative by websites like NDMA[9] and SERS[10]. Information systems plays a
major role in all business sectors where as for disaster management, there is a little usage of information
systems.

Disaster management is a complex and chaotic process of recording, processing, storing and
disseminating of information to government and public in order to take timely and effective decisions.
It’s become difficulty for the government to operate rescue process unless proper information is recorded
and maintained. Government can take effective decision like allocation of funds, initiate rescue operation
from disaster management team, providing food and shelter, medical and rehabilitation centers,
transportation facilities, water and power supplies and other basic amenities for disaster victims and
peoples who surrounds them in all disaster phases such as risk reduction, preparedness, response and
recovery.

Blockchain is a means to track specific needs and resources. Requests and queries to the blockchain are
handled using smart contracts. In the context of blockchain, a smart contract is a business agreement
embedded into the transaction database and executed with transactions[4]. Here, we propose a new
architecture for a resource management system during a disaster scenario to create a portal where all
parties are verifiable and to provide basic information to the affected people such as weather details,
nearby shelters, location beacons and resource locations along with the ability to request for aid at their
location or at a safer house.

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 LITERATURE SURVEY

S.NO. Title Observation Limitations

1. Blockchain-centric This paper propose a resource

Resource management system to tackle the Latency in
Management System issue of extensive paperwork for transactions.
for Disaster Response deployment of relief material through
and Relief [5] a blockchain based web application
using Hyperledger Fabric.

2. Information The paper presents brief examples of No decentralized

technologies and use of information technology in implementation.
disaster management – different disaster management stages
Benefits and issues[8] such as disaster response, recovery,
preparedness and risk reduction.

3. Decentralizing Privacy: This paper contains information about Only suitable for
Using Blockchain to combination of blockchain and off storage of data but not
Protect PersonalData[7]. blockchain storage to construct a for processing of data.
personal data management platform
focused on privacy.

4. Use case of Blockchain This paper focuses on how Not implemented in

in Disaster blockchain can be used as an existing system
Management- A application during emergencies. contains only
Conceptual View [6]. conceptual view.

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 PROBLEM STATEMENT
The objective is to collaborate various stakeholders like government, Non- government, disaster team,
transportation, energy, communication services, hospitals, rehabilitation centers, financial services, local
government, residents to one platform where information are exchanged and secured for effective
management and recovery at the time of disaster.

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 PROPOSED METHODOLOGY

The system is designed to keep the following features.

1) Volunteers can register on the network to donate certain resources. They can also
register themselves as human resources. This allows various enterprises including the
government to view the volunteers list according to the registered resources, location
wise if needed.
2) Collecting donated goods from individual volunteers can be cumbersome, hence the
concept of local hubs is introduced to aggregate the donations over a fixed area before
they are transported by logistics.
3) Victims can register on the system to access relief material. In case a victim is unable to
register on his own he may approach any relief camp nearest to him.
4) Allowing collaboration between different enterprises on the network.

User Scenario 1 : User Requesting for Aid

When disaster hits, users request assistance to rescue themselves and their family and friends.
Once the request for aid has been made to the network, every stakeholders in the network
can access the location, and person or the team near to the location will send an
acknowledgement back to the network that the team is ready to rescue. When this
acknowledgement receives, with no delay, the respective rescue team will respond to the
request and rest of the rescue teams and other stakeholders can work on other request as well.
Since the information is transparent and secured, no data consistency or integrity do occur.
Once the rescue team done their emergency operation, the information
will be again propagate back to the network for the confirmation of work and the data is
stored in the blockchain with timestamp. The system model for rescue aid is shown in Figure
1.

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 Figure 1: System Model for Rescue Aid

User Scenario 2: During Recovery Phase

Information that recorded during disaster response phase will be used for recoveryphase. To get
to know the total damages and the amount of resources used, blockchain will help to keep track
of all the information stored in the blockchain. To provide victim certificate or to release funds
for recovery process, blockchain can really provide valuable and accurate information to take
strategic decisions. Since, the information stored in the network cannot be tampered, and are
transparent, actual status of disaster management process can be known to everyone without
any ambiguity. Figure 2 shows the verification of information during the recovery phase.

In addition to the above user scenario, there are several other associated problems do occur
during and after disaster like: finding nearest relief centre, outrage of disease may spread,
interrupted power supply, uneven distribution of water and food, finding missing people,
statistical count of affected people and their damages, transportation problem, issuing victim
certificates for future welfare, fraudulent behaviour to steal welfare of people etc. Blockchain
has the potentialto solve all such problem effectively and unambiguously without any delay.

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Figure 2: Verification of Information

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 CONCLUSION

Emergencies are unpredictable and it is impossible to have need list in advance. There is a need
to process the needs and provide resources in a dynamic environment in the quickest way
possible. With blockchain we have all the peers on a single network, hence validation of any
request is done by the blockchain. As a result, response for any request is quick. This will allow
for the swift transfer of goods and funds across concerned parties. Any monetary transaction
which takes place will also be recorded and can be accessed at any time for further inspection.
The resources denoted can be tracked by anyone on the channel in the blockchain hence the
trust of volunteers will be gained thus leading to an increase in participation on this platform. In
future we plan to conduct the tests on a distributed testbed which will show us the actual
behaviour of the network and chaincode under stress

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 REFERENCES

1. Seebacher, S., & Sch, R. (2017). Blockchain Technology as an Enabler of Service

Systems : A Structured Literature Review, 12–23. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-
56925-3
2. Kamble, S., Gunasekaran, A., & Arha, H. (2018). Understanding the Blockchain
technology adoption in supply chainsIndian context. International Journal of Production
Research, 0(0), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2018.1518610
3. Wang, H., Chen, K., & Xu, D. (2016). A maturity model for blockchain adoption.
Financial Innovation. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40854-016-0031-z
4. Sujit Biswas, Kashif Shaif, Boubakr Nour, Yu Wang and Fan Li. Scalable Blockchain
Framework for Secure Transactions in IoT. In IEEE Internet of Things Journal, October
2018.
5. Vinayak G. Bhat, H. P. Pranaav, S. Mini, Deepak Tosh. Blockchain-centric Resource
Management System for Disaster Response and Relief.
6. G.V. Sobha, P. Sridevi. Usecase of Blockchain in Disaster Management- A Conceptual
View. Seventeenth AIMS International Conference on Management.
7. Zyskind, G., & Pentland, A. S. (2015). Decentralizing Privacy : Using Blockchain to
Protect Personal Data. https://doi.org/10.1109/SPW.2015.27
8. Sakurai, M., & Murayama, Y. (2019). Information technologies and disaster
management – Benefits and issues. Progress in Disaster Science, 2, 100012.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pdisas.2019.100012
9. https://ndma.gov.in/
10. https://smartamerica.org/teams/smart-emergency-response-system-sers/

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