Blockchain for smart built environment: Current status, challenges, and prospects

Blockchain has attracted enormous attention in the built environment due to its merits of decentralization, traceability, immutability, and transparency. To capture its research trends, this chapter reviews and discusses the applications, challenges, and prospects of blockchain in the built environment. Blockchain applications to realize the smart built environment were summarized into seven categories: energy, transportation, construction industry, smart home, smart government, smart city, and sharing economy. Next, technical challenges related to blockchain implementations such as network topology, data privacy, and interoperability issues, and non-technical issues such as resistance to change, additional costs, and lack of regularity clarity were discussed in this chapter. Finally, three notable prospects that blockchain holds in the built environment were presented in this chapter: (1) the adoption of blockchain smart contracts, (2) blockchain with token-based incentives, and (3) the integration of blockchain and other digital technologies. Although the application of blockchain in the built environment is currently in its early stages, there is a promising and diverse future for this technology in this significant sector.