Improving the Resilience of Smart City Systems During Network Outage

Leidmar Magnus Festa; Daniel Fernando Pigatto; Luiz Celso Gomes-Jr

doi:10.22456/2175-2745.150232

Authors

Leidmar Magnus Festa Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (UTFPR) https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5390-5143
Daniel Fernando Pigatto Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (UTFPR) https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8528-7407

Competing Interests

The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Luiz Celso Gomes-Jr Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (UTFPR)

Competing Interests

The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22456/2175-2745.150232

Keywords:

Blockchain, Fog Computing, Off-chain data, Oracle, Smart City

Abstract

This work presents an architecture that allows Information Systems to function even in moments of network disconnection, using a Healthcare Unit (HCU, from the Portuguese Unidade Municipal de Saúde - UMS) as a use case. The architecture uses a blockchain as a distributed database and one of its nodes (proxy node) is physically located inside an HCU, connected to its Local Area Network (LAN). During moments of disconnection between the LAN and the Internet, the proxy node continues handling query requests made by authenticated users on the LAN, functioning as a fog layer. It is also possible to generate new data and, with the help of a reliable oracle, write it to a local database. In these disconnection periods, the architecture explores the blockchain node's behavior and an oracle's functionality to record newly generated data. This approach makes it possible to guarantee the authenticity of the queried data. It is also possible to aggregate enough information about the new generated data to guarantee its integrity. Moreover, this information ensures the traceability and auditability of this data. An architecture prototype was implemented and used for execution tests. The test results show that the proposed architecture can maintain the information system working properly during a network outage. Therefore, the architecture increases the system resilience, being its application suitable for a smart city scenario, where data availability is desired.

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Author Biographies

Daniel Fernando Pigatto, Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (UTFPR)

Professor at the Academic Department of Informatics (DAINF) and the Graduate Program in Applied Computing (PPGCA) at the Federal University of Technology – Paraná (UTFPR), Curitiba campus, since 2017. Holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the Integrated Regional University (URI), Erechim campus, RS (2009), and Master's (2012) and Doctoral (2017) degrees in Sciences from the Program in Computer Science and Computational Mathematics (CCMC) at the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Sciences (ICMC) of the University of São Paulo (USP), São Carlos campus, SP. Completed a doctoral exchange program (sandwich PhD) in 2015 at the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol, United Kingdom. Served as Coordinator of the Undergraduate Program in Telecommunication Systems Technology and as Chair of both the Program Collegiate and the Structuring Teaching Core (NDE) from March 2019 to May 2021. Chaired the committee responsible for organizing and executing the weekly live-streaming program "Conexão UTFPR," broadcast on UTFPR’s official channel, where he also acted as moderator, from November 2020 to August 2021. Coordinates the outreach project "Cafezíneos Blog, Live and Podcast – Discussing the University," which aims to promote the university through social media, videos, texts, and podcasts. Has been the coordinator of the Graduate Program in Applied Computing (PPGCA) since 2023. His research focuses on Computer Networks, with emphasis on Fog Computing, Internet of Things, Security, Critical Embedded Systems, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, and Performance Evaluation of Computational Systems.

Luiz Celso Gomes-Jr, Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (UTFPR)

Professor in the Department of Informatics at UTFPR–Curitiba since 2015, where I teach courses in Data Science and Natural Language Processing. I have supervised more than 50 undergraduate and graduate students.
PhD from UNICAMP, with research exchanges at the University of Waterloo (Canada), UPMC–Paris, and Université d'Orléans (France). Researcher in the fields of Databases and Data Science for over 20 years. In addition to academic experience, I have also worked in industry and government.

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