In April 2019 ESA has released a White Paper on “Blockchain and Earth Observation” to define the key focus areas for the EO community to explore in the context of the Space 4.0 and future digital engineering for space missions. This publication is a second installation of the “Issue Briefs” by the ESA Blockchain / Distributed Ledgers and EO Community of Practice (CoP), providing in-depth analysis of one of the priority actions identified by the White Paper for implementation as a part of the DLT technology research, development and proofing. The version of this article will be published by the “Blockchain: Law and Governance” Springer Book, forthcoming in September 2020.
Synopsis: The blockchain industry is currently at the center of the European agenda for the so-called “Deep Tech” industries which span all key cutting-edge disciplines such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), quantum computing, computer vision, robotics, and nanotech. This paper focuses on the few selected case studies that show the potential for the convergence of EO and blockchain platforms to demonstrate the cutting edge thinking about how EO technology can be used to advance development of blockchain applications, how blockchain can be incorporated into EO product and service design, and what sorts of new tools and methods can be built on blockchain and EO cross over. These case studies are related to land tenure, agriculture and forestry value chains where several important proofs-of-concept have been developed to shed more light concerning the feasibility and lessons learnt from the first implementations.
Full paper available here