A Blockchain-Based Approach to Enable Remote Sensing Trusted Data

Remote sensing considerably benefits from the fusion of open data from different sources, including far-range sensors mounted on satellites and short-range sensors on drones or Internet of Things devices. Open data is an emerging philosophy attracting an increasing number of data owners willing to share. However, most of the data owners are unknown and thus, untrustable, which makes shared data likely unreliable and possibly compromising associated outcomes. Currently, there exist tools that distribute open data, acting as intermediaries connecting data owners and users. However, these tools are managed by central authorities that set rules for data ownership, access, and integrity, limiting data owners and users. Therefore, a need emerges for a decentralized system to share and retrieve data without intermediaries limiting participants. Here, we propose a blockchain-based system to share and retrieve data without the need for a central authority. The proposed architecture (i) allows sharing data, (ii) maintains the data history (origin and updates), and (iii) allows retrieving and evaluating the data adding trustworthiness. To this end, the blockchain network enables the direct connection of data owners and users. Furthermore, blockchain automatically interacts with participants and keeps a transparent record of their actions. Hence, blockchain provides a decentralized database that enables trust among the participants without a central authority. We analyzed the potentials and critical issues of the architecture in a remote sensing use case of precision farming. The analysis shows that participants benefit from the properties of the blockchain in providing trusted data for remote sensing applications.