Combating Electric Bike Theft with Blockchain

« Realising Citizen-centric Identity

Blog

Creating a Culture for Open Innovation »

I often get asked about a good example of a blockchain use case that is easy to understand, where the blockchain value add is obvious. How about this one . . .?

Every time I go into a bike shop these days, there is an increasingly impressive array of electric bikes. I’m not sure what amazes me more - the technical features, or the price tag! So theft is a big issue.One can buy a smart locks to remotely track and secure bikes. This both provides an opportunity for better theft prevention and enables business models for bike rental. A better bike registration system is needed to share ownership information and that puts the bike owner in control.

The Netherland Vehicle Licencing Agency (RDW) and IBM have developed an electric bike registration proof of concept based on blockchain technology, which they call BikeBlockchain.

Bike owners can prove their ownership and report the bike stolen through a blockchain enabled application. The smart lock on the bike registers the position of the bike, which is recorded onto the blockchain when the lock is activated. When a bike is stolen the police are able to see the latest position to respond instantly. Insurance companies can use smart contracts to automate their claim handling processing making this much more reliable and efficient.

The business network, and their interaction withthe blockchain is shown in the following figure.

This is a proof of concept at this stage, but shows blockchain in action with an innovative new approach to a real problem!

Thanks to IBM & RDW for excellent source material!

27 Oct 2017 at 16:41