Co-located at GIScience 2018; 10th International Conference on Geographic Information Science; 28-31 August 2018, Melbourne, Australia

Workshop Description and Scope

Distributed ledger and blockchain technologies, the public, immutable and distributed database systems underlying cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, along with the recent innovation to put decentralised programmable scripts (smart contracts) on blockchains, have generated a tremendous amount of interest lately. Many of the newly proposed applications of blockchain technology are geospatial in nature, including distributed land records, the internet of things, sensor networks, cloud computing, geo-privacy, and improved ownership models for crowdsourced geographic information. The representation of spatial information on the blockchain and the creation of smart contracts that are location-aware has the potential to impact geographic information systems to a similar degree as the introduction of Web 2.0 did over a decade ago.

Workshop Format

For the symposium, we ask each participant to submit a short (1-2 page) statement of interest exploring ideas at the intersection of blockchains, distributed ledgers, smart contracts and spatial information research. Please upload your papers to easychair by 1 July, 2018.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

Representing spatial information on the blockchain, including 3D and complex geometries
Indexing spatial information on the blockchain
Handling geographic information uncertainty in smart contracts triggered by geospatial events
Big geo-data on the blockchain including integration with other distributed decentralised database systems (e.g., IPFS)
Distributed, peer-to-peer spatial data infrastructure
Location-aware smart contracts
Location verification for smart contracts
Semantic sensor networks and event detection for smart contracts
Producer ownership of volunteered geographic information
Peer-to-peer geospatial data and public participation GIS
Legal and social implications of spatial smart contracts and immutable spatial data on public blockchains
Trust, reputation, and distributed consensus for geospatial information
Geospatial metadata and geo-privacy issues for data on distributed ledgers
Spatial applications of distributed ledger technology: for augmented reality, the internet of things, cloud
computing, autonomous mobile systems, land ownership registry, environmental resource management, etc.
Spatial analysis of public blockchain networks and users

Organizers

Krzysztof Janowicz, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
Benjamin Adams, University of Canterbury, NZ
Blake Regalia, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA