Blockchain is a digital decentralized registry of electronic transactions that are secure and verifiable. The technology is used to record cryptocurrency transactions (e.g. Bitcoin) and smart contracts as well as others; however, very little has been documented about how blockchain can be used in the context of geospatial applications. This presentation will discuss use free open geospatial standards in blockchain.

1. Using Blockchain in
Geospatial Applications
Luis Bermudez
Executive Director Innovation Program
OGC
ST. Louis, MO , May 16, 2018

2. Content
• Intro to Blockchain and OGC Standards.
• How to deal with geospatial data in the
blockchain.
• Land registry records use case.
• Geospatial digital rights management.

3. Ledger
Registry of
Transactions
Collection of
Financial
Accounts

4. Distributed Ledger
Traditional
transaction
It is officially
stored in one
place in notary,
bank..,
Distributed Ledger
Technology
- There is no centralized
data storage
- it is replicated
- it is synchronized
- across nodes (sites,
countries, organizations)

5. Block – stores transactions
Transaction 1
Transaction 2
Transaction …
~ size 1 MB
Can go up to
8MB
~ 500 number
of transactions
Header
Previous block hash
Hash
Timestamp
Summary of transactions
…

6. Blockchain
000000000000000000301fcfeb141088a93b77dc0d52571a1185b425256ae2fb
Connected via
referencing
previous block
(hash)

7. Blockchain
Use for
cryptocurrency
bitcoin
Florida considers digital driver's
license backed by blockchain

8. Draw attention to the importance of the work of
ISO/TC 307 dealing with Blockchain and Electronic
Distributed Ledger Technologies

9. Technology transactions

10. Where was the transaction
performed?
Smart
ContractInside each
transaction?
In the header?
Where to put location
information?
How to encode
location information?
By: FOAM

11. If the transaction involves
a “geospatial object”
Smart
Contract
Do we put it in the block?
Do we put a preview in the
block?
How to properly reference
map, vector data, time
series, etc..?

12. 106th OGC Technical Committee
Orléans, France, March 2018

13. Where did the transaction
occurred?

14. FOAM – Crypto-spatial
Coordinates
57.64911,10.40744 u4pruydqqvj
Only points
Great for 1D indexing
Can be decompose back into
coordinates

15. Discrete Global Grid Systems
OGC
Standard
We can
uniquely
reference any
place in the
Earth with a
common grid
Hash of
global grid
cells By Josh
Liberman

16. Well Known Text
Well Known Binary (WKB) Geometries encoded in
Binary Large Objects (BLOBs)

17. OGC Web Services and
Blockchain

18. Maps
(WMS,
WMTS)
Coverages
(WCS)
Vector (WFS)
Time Series
(SOS,,
SensorThings
API, …)
Web Processing
Service (WPS)

19. Ideas to reference a
request
Transaction
- Link to the OGC request
- Time when the request was made
- …
Summary BBOX of the transactions …

20. Web Feature Service 3.0 REST+JSON
Time:
Transactions
…

21. Land Registry Records
Today – when buying a property
- Find the title
- Secure the title
- Previous lawful owner signed it
But
- Title can be flawed
- Forged Signatures

22. Land Registry Records
Transaction
- Vector data representing the
parcel (WKT?)
- …
GeoHash constructed from a global grid.

26. Distributed Ledgers

27. Smart Contract implementation Use Case

28. Summary
Where and how we
encode the location?
Land Registry Records
Digital Rights
Distributed Ledgers and
Blockchain

29. Next step – join the
conversation
http://www.ogcmeet.org
Luis Bermudez
lbermudez@opengeospatial.org
Twitter @berdez