Sustainable Certification of Local Communities Data through Smart Contracts

Local communities engage production systems based on a set of agreed quality standards to which each member must adhere. Most of these systems, from local food production to renewable energy communities, require continuous and transparent monitoring of sensor values collected from users' devices. Existing centralized solutions for data monitoring grant sole authority to a single entity, introducing risks of data manipulation without consensus. Distributed ledger technologies offer promising solutions, but their scalability limitations pose challenges in handling the vast volume of data generated by Internet of Things applications. This paper proposes an innovative approach that leverages distributed ledger technologies to certify sensor data, allowing user groups to customize their certification policies by exploiting the policy templates we provide. We develop our templates and system monitoring as Hyperledger Fabric smart contracts and validate our solution on three different use cases in local communities. Experimental results show that our system reduces blockchain stored data volume and enhances trust and transparency in sensor monitoring while accommodating diverse stakeholder requirements. Our solution enables a simple, detailed analysis of certified policy violations.