Asset tracking trend

Asset tracking remains a cornerstone of mobile device management, addressing the crucial need to monitor and manage assets effectively. Despite the availability of numerous commercial applications—comprehensively summarized in resources like this list of IoT asset tracking systems—the subject continues to garner significant academic interest. This is evidenced by the increasing volume of research outputs, as illustrated in the accompanying analysis.

The continuous growth of interest, despite existing solutions, brings into focus the gaps left by the current technologies. One such prominent area deals with the integration of asset tracking with blockchain technologies. Blockchain enables transparent and trustworthy inter-organizational business collaboration, thanks to its unique advantage. These collaborations are particularly relevant in industries managing real-world assets where decentralized platforms can record collaboration-relevant data immutably and traceably.

Blockchain-enabled decentralized applications (dApps) leverage smart contracts to automate and enforce business protocols and conditions. This eliminates the need for centralized trusted intermediaries, fostering a trustless environment ideal for managing complex asset ecosystems. For accurate real-world asset identification, such systems must account for all correlated parties and their roles within public network inter-organizational collaborations and value ecosystems. This role-based accountability is crucial for maintaining trust and transparency across the value chain.

However, successful implementation will require the addressing of key challenges such as:

• Integration to Asset Management Platforms: The blockchain system will need to integrate seamlessly with existing asset management platforms and offer sufficient semantics to model operational hierarchies aptly.
• Scalability and Complexity: Every asset could own or manage hundreds of subordinate assets, so the system would need to be robust enough for large-scale operations, without compromising performance.
• Operational Reconciliation: The transparency of blockchain coupled with managerial hierarchies required at an operational level assure that the system will support high-level collaboration as well as granular operational control.

With a solution to these challenges, blockchain-integrated asset tracking systems have the potential to revolutionize asset management by bringing together aspects of transparency, efficiency, and scalability to meet evolving demands within modern value ecosystems. Thus, we should be prepared to see the development of or even develop such integrated solutions and prototypes.

The DIGEST project is committed to contributing to such developments.