A Blockchain-Based Spatial Crowdsourcing System for Spatial Information Collection Using a Reward Distribution

Abstract

Due to the increasing relevance of spatial information in different aspects of location-based services, various methods are used to collect this information. The use of crowdsourcing due to plurality and distribution is a remarkable strategy for collecting information, especially spatial information. Crowdsourcing can have a substantial effect on increasing the accuracy of data. However, many centralized crowdsourcing systems lack security and transparency due to a trusted party’s existence. With the emergence of blockchain technology, there has been an increase in security, transparency, and traceability in spatial crowdsourcing systems. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based spatial crowdsourcing system in which workers confirm or reject the accuracy of tasks. Tasks are reports submitted by requesters to the system; a report comprises type and location. To our best knowledge, the proposed system is the first system that all participants receive rewards. This system considers spatial and non-spatial reward factors to encourage users’ participation in collecting accurate spatial information. Privacy preservation and security of spatial information are considered in the system. We also evaluated the system efficiency. According to the experiment results, using the proposed system, information accuracy increased by 40%, and the minimum time for reviewing reports by facilities reduced by 30%. Moreover, we compared the proposed system with the current centralized and distributed crowdsourcing systems. This comparison shows that, although our proposed system omits the user’s history to preserve privacy, it considers a consensus-based approach to guarantee submitted reports’ accuracy. The proposed system also has a reward mechanism to encourage more participation.