Revolutionising the approach to smart campus architecture through IoT and blockchain technologies

Rapid development in advanced technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Blockchain has led to a growth of interest in a number of application areas, including smart environments such as a smart campus, which can be considered as an example of a smart city. Despite such growth, no comprehensive guiding framework has been developed for emerging IoT and Blockchain technologies deployment in the smart campus environment, particularly in relation to security and privacy aspects, as well as to the mitigation of known problems with IoT and Blockchain in existing applications. This chapter proposes a novel architecture framework for the IoT and Blockchain applications deployed within a smart campus environment, comparing the main technologies involved. As a specific example, this framework is tested for integration of Blockchain and other relevant technologies into the higher education certificating system for issuing authentic, verifiable and sharable student credentials. The existing certificating systems are marked by their lack of speed and low reliability and, in certain educational systems, they produce social and cultural conflicts. The proposed Blockchain-based student certification system is aimed to address these existing problems. Specific higher education institutes in Saudi Arabia were used as a case study to present a certificate validation and sharing framework that guarantees authenticity through leveraging the privacy and security features of a Blockchain network. The proposed solution was validated with the user acceptance study. Two groups of participants, employers and academic users, with a majority of female respondents, were included in this empirical study focusing on the evaluation of the proposed framework, assessing the potential for Blockchain adoption in higher education. The validity and reliability of the framework was tested using a sequential mixed methods design involving the collection of qualitative interview data and quantitative survey data. The results of this study are particularly useful in the context of developing countries. It is expected that the proposed framework will have useful applications in a variety of fields, where it is necessary to determine whether a satisfactory level of IoT and Blockchain technologies has been achieved and maintained in accordance with the relevant safety and security standards.