Alarm Management System Using Blockchain for Data Integrity
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Solution Overview
Problem
Traditional fire management systems face challenges in securely storing and verifying historical data and event records, which are often required by regulatory agencies, insurance companies, and maintenance entities, making compliance and data integrity difficult to achieve.
Innovation Solution
An alarm management system utilizing blockchain technology to store and manage data, including a processor, storage medium, alarm device, and nodal access sites, where event signals are time-stamped and recorded as transactions on a blockchain, providing a secure and immutable record-keeping system.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional digital storage is used to store alarm and event data, then storage simplicity is maintained, but data integrity and verification difficulty increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces blockchain technology as an intermediary layer between the alarm management system and external entities. The blockchain application acts as a mediator that receives alarm and event data, transforms it into transactions, and stores it in an immutable ledger. This intermediary structure ensures data integrity through cryptographic hashing and distributed consensus without requiring complex verification protocols at each access point, thus improving reliability while managing system complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates cryptographic copies of alarm and event data in the form of blockchain transactions. Each piece of data is hashed and stored as an immutable record on the blockchain, creating a verified copy that can be distributed to multiple nodal access sites. This copying mechanism ensures data integrity across different entities (regulatory agencies, insurance companies, maintenance entities) without requiring them to trust the original storage system, thereby improving reliability while keeping the core storage mechanism relatively simple.
2Ease of operation
If blockchain technology is implemented to ensure data integrity, then verification ease is improved, but storage complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The blockchain implementation provides self-service verification capabilities. The immutable nature of blockchain transactions and the distributed ledger structure allow any nodal access site to independently verify data integrity without requiring complex authentication protocols or trusted third parties. Each participant can verify the authenticity of alarm and event data through cryptographic validation, making verification easy while the blockchain infrastructure handles the storage complexity centrally.
3Adaptability or versatility
If multiple entities need access to alarm records, then data accessibility is improved, but data security and authenticity maintenance become more difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The blockchain ledger serves multiple functions simultaneously: it stores alarm and event data, provides verification mechanisms, enables distributed access control, and maintains data authenticity. The same immutable ledger structure supports access by regulatory agencies, insurance companies, and maintenance entities with different authorization levels. This universal structure allows multiple entities to access and verify data without compromising authenticity, as each entity receives the same verified copy from the distributed ledger.
Data Source
AI summary
An alarm management system includes a control arrangement, an alarm device, a blockchain, a blockchain application, and a plurality of nodal access sites. The arrangement includes a processor and a storage medium. The device is configured to output an event signal to the control arrangement. The blockchain is stored in the medium, and includes a plurality of transaction types. Each transaction type includes at least one linked transaction, and the at least one linked transaction is time stamped. The blockchain application is stored in the medium, and is executed by the processor, and is configured to time stamp each one of the transactions. The blockchain is applied by the application to determine a current associated transaction with any one of the transaction types, and output data associated with the current transaction. The plurality of nodal access sites are configured to receive and output the data associated with the current transaction.