Towards Smart Construction Industry 4.0 based on blockchain-enabled cyber

Abstract:

Prefabricated construction has been widely used in Hong Kong in order to reduce cost and improve efficiency while assuring quality. However, current logistics and supply chain management (LSCM) of prefabricated construction is facing challenges, such as low efficient coordination, less trust and information island among relative stakeholders. This paper introduces a novel blockchain-enabled cyber-physical platform to address these challenges. Firstly, a unified four-layer blockchain architecture is proposed to clearly develop, integrate and extend this technology in LSCM of prefabricated construction. Second, blockchain information service is proposed and used as a middleware to connect the cyber-physical system in prefabricated construction. Then the operational workflow has been translated into smart contract to provide a trusted mechanism for cross-enterprise collaborations. Finally, the system configuration of the blockchain based visualization platform will incorporate related stakeholders to achieve real time prefab components tracking and tracing, also information will be transmitted and shared simultaneously among them. The findings show that the blockchain-enabled solution not only facilitates the highly integrated and standardized platform for multi-stakeholders, but also provides a trusted and transparent collaborative mechanism in LSCM of prefabricated construction.