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Suggested Citation:"Session 6: Data Sharing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Introduction to Blockchain and Airport Operations in a COVID-19 Environment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26036.
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Suggested Citation:"Session 6: Data Sharing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Introduction to Blockchain and Airport Operations in a COVID-19 Environment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26036.
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Suggested Citation:"Session 6: Data Sharing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Introduction to Blockchain and Airport Operations in a COVID-19 Environment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26036.
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Suggested Citation:"Session 6: Data Sharing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Introduction to Blockchain and Airport Operations in a COVID-19 Environment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26036.
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Suggested Citation:"Session 6: Data Sharing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Introduction to Blockchain and Airport Operations in a COVID-19 Environment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26036.
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Suggested Citation:"Session 6: Data Sharing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Introduction to Blockchain and Airport Operations in a COVID-19 Environment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26036.
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34 SESSION 6  Data Sharing   Siegfried Adler, SC Adler & Associates, Moderator Presenters  Kevin O’Sullivan, SITA Simon Brown, Heathrow Airport Silvio Pupo, Logos Capital This session included discussions on blockchain-related opportunities for facilitating and improving airport and traveler data sharing. Siegfried Adler stated that airports are complex systems that require data to be shared across airlines, airport terminals, government organizations, and other entities. Data are often siloed, which hinders communication and coordination. Adler noted that blockchain can enable untrusted parties to share information without having to share competitive or highly confidential information. Kevin O’Sullivan noted that blockchain creates a chain of custody, generates trust between untrusted parties, allows for programmable, immediate, and flexible transfer of ownership, and creates shared control of data. He stated that public blockchains (e.g., Bitcoin and Ethereum) are open to anyone to participate, sync up a node, see data, and become a miner (i.e., add transaction records to the ledger). However, many use cases have shown that people do not want their data on a public blockchain. Private blockchains (e.g., Hyperledger Fabric applications and the financial system R3r3) are set up by a single organization or multiple organizations that manage who has access. O’Sullivan noted that some of the true benefits of blockchain are lost with private blockchains, but there are more enterprise use cases. A key benefit of blockchain, he said, is proof of existence that cannot be changed or deleted. O’Sullivan stated that blockchain is still very much an emerging technology. He noted that, in 2016, it was assumed that blockchain was 2 to 5 years from maturity as a technology. Since then, blockchain has fragmented significantly in terms of its application, but the maturity or plateau remains years away. O’Sullivan stated that SITA’s FlightChain project was launched in conjunction with several airlines and airports, addressing what remains a real issue—the lack of a single picture or

35 understanding of the status of a flight. Data about flights are fragmented across different organizations and even within different databases within a single organization. O’Sullivan noted that with a single flight, arrival and departure, airports and airlines may have different information on arrival and departure times, gates, baggage carousels, and more. O’Sullivan noted that the intent of FlightChain was to get all actors to share data on a blockchain and provide or merge data from different data sets to offer a single version of truth about a single data set for any given flight. Each participant hosted a node fed with data from its own database. A smart contract across the system managed the rules about who can and cannot update data and how to arbiter conflicting data coming into the system. O’Sullivan noted that when the FlightChain project launched, the focus for blockchain was use cases. SITA used Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum and learned that the technology platform is irrelevant, because the technology is still changing very rapidly. O’Sullivan stated that there are many platforms, all of which fill similar roles, and noted that it is better to focus on the use case. O’Sullivan noted key learnings from FlightChain, including the importance of the governance model, particularly in a private permissioned blockchain environment. If a single organization is running and controlling the blockchain, all the benefits of blockchain have effectively been lost while all the complexity of blockchain has been introduced. O’Sullivan noted some of the questions that arose in this multienterprise application environment:  Who defines, agrees, and signs off on the contract;  Whether everyone gets equal say;  Who owns the data;  Who is accountable for the uptime and network security and integrity; and  How to manage a situation in which someone starts entering fraudulent data. O’Sullivan stated that FlightChain evolved into SITA’s Aviation Blockchain Sandbox, or blockchain–as-a-service, which has been made open to the industry. FlightChain itself has grown in terms of the number of participants, though ongoing questions of governance remain. O’Sullivan noted that operational data need to be shared on a private, managed blockchain.

36 O’Sullivan stated that SSID involves three parties: the issuer, the holder, and the verifier. SITA is working to get health authorities that conduct COVID-19 testing to issue SSIDs to passengers and work with airlines, airports, and governments to get SSIDs validated prior to departure and arrival. Simon Brown stated that Heathrow Airport is the biggest port by value for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In the month of April 2020, Heathrow saw 200,000 passengers. In a normal day in the summer months, 250,000 passengers would pass through the airport. Brown stated that the pandemic has had a major impact on airport finance and operations. Heathrow reduced its service to one runway and two operational terminals, though passenger numbers are beginning to increase again. Brown stated that digital readiness is critical for Heathrow. In 2015, in part in response to issues with control center coordination several years earlier, Heathrow put in place an airport operations center that acts as the airport’s central nervous system, consolidating all operational functions. There is a community app that sends out information to approximately 35,000 Team Heathrow staff members. The airport also has an app that allows passengers to book services, go shopping, and monitor their flights to avoid crowding around flight information screens. Brown stated that passenger temperature checks have been running since May. That information is fed back into Public Health England to improve understanding of how Heathrow can be part of an international effort to recharge the aviation industry. Brown noted that passengers need to be comfortable traveling and that there is a need for international standards and agreement for how the global travel industry will be restarted. Brown stated that he believes a key issue for health passports is how the process is managed. Brown noted that one of the greatest innovations in air traffic control is the capability that mainframe computers brought to automate human activities and increase the number of aircraft that could be safely managed by one person. However, there is now a plethora of new technologies (including blockchain) that cannot be unlocked because so much of this old technology is still in operation. Brown noted that there are far fewer staff available to respond manually when things do go wrong and that there have been many instances of digital outages causing passenger delays. One study found that 60% of root causes of flight delays are data issues. Brown stated that series systems are not as reliable as distributed parallel systems. If there are 10 systems in a chain and they are all 99.99% available, the overall availability is reduced, leading to systemic delays. However, if all data clouds or shared systems are 99.99%

37 available in a multiregion, the systems become much more reliable. Brown stated that, for this reason, blockchain is attractive in terms of building resilience for how airports deliver services to passengers. Brown noted that unmanned flight taxis are not too far from being a reality. The traditional systems should not be looking after those flights. Brown stated that the United Kingdom has launched the Future Flight research program to look at developing and demonstrating integrated aviation systems that enable the introduction of new classes of electric and autonomous air vehicles. Researching the use of new technologies allows for preservation of decentralized, traditional operating models while improving operational resilience and saving costs. Brown stated that international collaboration is critical. Heathrow is looking at how data from its trials can inform international standards and is committed to collaborative research and development. Silvio Pupo stated that in Florida, the goal of the Florida Blockchain Foundation, working with the Government Blockchain Association (GBA) and the Miami-Dade Beacon Council, is to create “Smart Florida,” a multimodal system that links all main systems (i.e., port, rail, and airport). Pupo argued that in the current reality, the aviation industry is poised to lead the necessary global recovery and digitization efforts. Blockchain applications are used to connect data for smart contracts and to integrate the multimodal system. Pupo noted that integration requirements are vital. Pupo stated that the current effort in Florida is focused on addressing inefficiencies in three main flows: physical movement, information movement, and monetary movement. None of these processes can be digitized without creating the right infrastructure and transparency throughout the supply chain at airports and other ports or systems. Pupo noted the complexities of coordinating and sharing data between entities throughout the supply chain and stated that blockchain could help to address those complexities. Pupo noted that challenges associated with some high-profile blockchain pilot cases have created significant hesitation among other stakeholders and that the governance model selected is key. The model is foundational and must be updated over time. Pupo stated that many in the blockchain community have argued that the next evolution of blockchain governance may be the concept of decentralized autonomous organizations

38 (DAOs).1 Pupo noted that DAOs are distributed networks of stakeholders who purchase blockchain-based digital assets or invest cryptocurrency that allows them to participate in decision-making and governance processes. Pupo noted that DAOs have rules and processes based on smart contracts that are used to determine whether something is true, thereby limiting human intervention and tampering as much as possible, and to govern roles for decision-making and value allocation. In its purest form, a DAO would have no centralized legal entity, and tokens would act as an incentive for validators. A DAO would give all stakeholders a vote, and consensus would be reached collectively. For example, Pupo noted that the GBA is attempting to implement a DAO via a government autonomous organization. Pupo stated that currently, the GBA has a traditional association governance model, including established bylaws that are designed to make the GBA a member-driven organization. The GBA is led by operational staff but is overseen by a board of directors. Pupo noted that there is a need to address the issue of dealing with different jurisdictions with different requirements. In these instances, the information needed is bifurcated from the decision-making processes under the rules of smart contracts, and decisions are executed by respective members of individual DAOs in different jurisdictions. Pupo stated that the GBA working group is moving toward a model of distributed autonomous governance as a proof of concept. The GBA’s government autonomous organization will have 21 electors, chapters around the world, and thousands of members from the public and private sectors. In that process, the founder of GBA is allowing the board to be chosen by the 21 electors, who will also decide which decisions are made by the board. The electors are voted on by the broader membership. Pupo noted that another emerging blockchain governance concept is the limited liability autonomous organization or LAO.2 Pupo stated that an LAO is essentially a DAO that has been turned into a limited liability entity and uses curated smart contracts to handle mechanisms associated with voting, funding, and the allocation of collected funds or other variables. LAOs address many of the regulation and compliance issues that the first generation of DAOs faced. Pupo noted that to comply with U.S. law, onboarding to the LAO 1 Pupo was not referring to the now‐defunct blockchain investment fund known as the DAO (sometimes referred  to as “the Genesis DAO”), the charity‐funding platform Moloch DAO, or the cryptocurrency and lending platform  known as Maker DAO. He was referring to the general concept of blockchain DAOs as first proposed by Dan  Larimer in 2013—decentralized autonomous corporations (DACs) that relied on blockchains and smart contracts to  organize their commercial affairs—and discussed by Vitalik Buterin, the founder of the Ethereum blockchain, in the  Ethereum Whitepaper (originally published in 2013), which took Larimer’s concept and presented a more  formalized, code‐based, generalizable version of the DAC that could be applied to noncorporate entities. In  Buterin’s vision, which has become the generally accepted concept of a DAO used in the blockchain community, a  DAO is a governance, voting, and value‐transfer system. All references to DAOs in these proceedings refer to the  generalized concept articulated by Buterin rather than to specific commercial entities that have used this name.  2 Pupo was referring to the generalized concept of an LAO rather than to the specific LAO currently run by  ConsenSys OpenLaw. 

39 would be structured such that anyone coming on would need to be accredited and meet certain requirements imposed by regulators. Pupo noted the importance of buy-in from platform end users, which can be obtained through governance structures that give stakeholders a voice. Data utilization is also key to consider. Members who have privacy concerns can share anonymous data. Data are siloed and kept in the transaction with necessary metadata that could be given to other people for an incentive. Pupo noted the need to consider what the incentive is for someone to adopt a new platform. Pupo suggested using a closed system when data are sensitive to add an extra layer of protection. Closed permissioned systems or closed consortiums allow access only to an authorized set of participants. Pupo stated that blockchain protocols can implement ZKPs. If an entity wants to share that a transaction has happened without disclosing identifiable information, ZKPs allow for validation to occur without understanding what truly underlies that data. Pupo stated that the participants in any project will have a public key (analogous to an e- mail address) and a private key (analogous to an e-mail password). The way the data are shared through the blockchain ensures that everything has military-grade encryption. Pupo noted that GDPR is an important concern for blockchain. Additionally, legislation was recently passed in the European Union that may have an impact on blockchain applications. Pupo noted the importance of needing to stay abreast of legal developments, as the landscape is continually changing. Pupo stated that it is possible to argue that there is limited privacy and a great deal of privacy with blockchain and that, with decentralization, there is no single point of failure. He noted that it is important to keep resilient design and architecture in mind; blockchain creates redundancy that supports resilience. Pupo noted that losing a private key is still a significant issue.

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In the airport industry, potential applications for blockchain include security and identification, flight data management, safety and maintenance, baggage and cargo tracking, regulatory compliance, and more. Promising blockchain applications specific to COVID-19 include passenger health verification and contact tracing, facilitating a contactless passenger experience, and tracking the movement of healthcare supplies and pharmaceuticals (including vaccines) from origin to final destination.

The TRB Airport Cooperative Research Program's Conference Proceedings on the Web 28: Introduction to Blockchain and Airport Operations in a COVID-19 Environment brings together conference proceedings of representatives from the airport sector and the blockchain industry along with other experts engaged in airport operations, information technology, and blockchain.

This ACRP Insight Event took place virtually on August 4–5, 2020. More information is available at http://www.trb.org/ACRP/ACRP-Insight-Events.aspx.

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