5. Blockchain-Based Fog Computing Model (BFCM) for IoT Smart Cities

Over the past few years, the necessity of smart city has grown considerably. The smart city infrastructure grasps several technologies like Internet of Things, blockchain, and fog and cloud computing to form sustainable development of innovative applications for intellectual data processing, control systems, and communications between heterogeneous network infrastructures. Some of the smart city’s initiatives are green energy, water and pollution management, smart transportation, wireless Internet services, and promotion of local commerce that incorporate technologies in infrastructure to extenuate many of the entanglements. Blockchain provides decentralized architecture with the list of records called blocks, linked using cryptography for built-in security to strengthen the trust and integrity of data transactions. Fog computing acts as a significant place to analyze the IoT data gathered from the near sensor devices at the edge of the network. The network edge performs the data processing for smart city applications and reduces the energy consumption for communication in IoT environment. But, the downside of the technology’s implementation is it faces multiple challenges like security, data privacy, data integrity, platform dependencies, and resource management. This chapter discusses a conceptual framework with the dimensions (1) technology, (2) human, and (3) organization and reconnoitring the challenges of digital technologies with the support of blockchain-based fog computing model which reduces energy consumption and latency in data communication and improves security features. At the end of this chapter, the authors present suggestions to get rid of the gap and challenges in connecting the cities and citizens to governance, education, and regulation.