Drill Cuttings Image Tracking With Blockchain Smart Contracts
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Solution Overview
Problem
The sheer volume of digital images generated during subterranean drilling operations, such as for oil and gas exploration, poses challenges in manual tracking, inventorying, and confirming the integrity of these images, as well as in automating customer invoicing and image management.
Innovation Solution
A blockchain-based digital image management system that includes a networked database, supplier and customer portals, and a blockchain ledger to manage and track digital images, ensuring image authenticity, automate inventory confirmation, and facilitate customer invoicing through smart contracts.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If manual tracking and inventorying of digital images is performed, then image management can be conducted, but the large volume of images generated daily makes manual tracking infeasible and time-consuming
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables automated self-tracking of digital images through blockchain technology. Smart contracts automatically record image creation, transfer, and processing activities without human intervention. The blockchain ledger autonomously maintains inventory records and integrity verification, eliminating the need for manual tracking while ensuring accurate documentation of all image lifecycle events.
2Adaptability or versatility
If digital images are copied, transferred, and processed multiple times, then image utility is enhanced, but manual confirmation of image integrity becomes impossible
Solution Approach 1:
The blockchain system provides continuous feedback on image integrity through cryptographic hashing. Each time an image is copied, transferred, or processed, the system automatically verifies the image's digital fingerprint against the original and records the verification status on the blockchain. This creates an immutable audit trail that confirms image integrity at every stage of its lifecycle, enabling reliable tracking despite multiple operations.
3Extent of automation
If automated tracking systems are implemented, then image management efficiency improves, but system complexity and infrastructure requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The blockchain ledger serves multiple functions simultaneously: it acts as a database for image metadata, an integrity verification system through cryptographic hashing, an automated audit trail recorder, and an invoicing platform. This multi-functionality consolidates what would otherwise require separate complex systems into a single unified infrastructure, reducing overall system complexity while maintaining high automation capabilities.
Data Source
AI summary
A system for managing and tracking digital images of drill cuttings includes at least one networked database configured to store the digital images. A supplier portal is configured to enable a supplier to upload the digital images into the database and a customer portal is configured to provide customer access to selected ones of the digital images in the database. A networked blockchain ledger is in communication with the database, the supplier portal, and the customer portal. The blockchain ledger is configured to initiate a smart chain contract for each of the digital images, record customer access events within each smart chain contract for each of the digital images, and create a micro invoice including charges related to the recorded customer access events.