Article: TRACC: tiered real-time anonymised chain for contact-tracing Journal: International Journal of Social and Humanistic Computing (IJSHC) 2024 Vol.4 No.2 pp.176 - 203 Abstract: Epidemiologists recommended contact-tracing as an effective control measure for the global infection like COVID-19 pandemic. Despite its effectiveness in infection containment, it has many limitations such as labour-intensive process, prone to human errors and most importantly, user privacy concerns. To address these shortcomings, we proposed location-aware blockchain-based hierarchical contact-tracing framework for anonymised data collection and processing. This infectious disease control framework serves both the infected users with localised alerts as well as stakeholders such as city officials and health workers with health statistics. Our proposed solution uses hierarchical network design that offloads individual infection block data to create hospital and city-level 'chains' for generating macro-level infection statistics. Results demonstrate that our system can represent the dynamic complexities of contract tracing in highly infection situations. Overall, our design emphasises on data processing and verification mechanism for large volume of infection data over a significant period of time for active risk assessment. Inderscience Publishers - linking academia, business and industry through research

Title: TRACC: tiered real-time anonymised chain for contact-tracing

Authors: Jordan Renaud; Blake Bleem; Srija Bandyopadhayay; Reshmi Mitra; Asit Bandyopadhayay; Thi Thanh Tuyen Nguyen

Addresses: Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau, USA ' Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau, USA ' St. Louis University, St. Louis, USA ' Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau, USA ' Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, USA ' Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau, USA

Abstract: Epidemiologists recommended contact-tracing as an effective control measure for the global infection like COVID-19 pandemic. Despite its effectiveness in infection containment, it has many limitations such as labour-intensive process, prone to human errors and most importantly, user privacy concerns. To address these shortcomings, we proposed location-aware blockchain-based hierarchical contact-tracing framework for anonymised data collection and processing. This infectious disease control framework serves both the infected users with localised alerts as well as stakeholders such as city officials and health workers with health statistics. Our proposed solution uses hierarchical network design that offloads individual infection block data to create hospital and city-level 'chains' for generating macro-level infection statistics. Results demonstrate that our system can represent the dynamic complexities of contract tracing in highly infection situations. Overall, our design emphasises on data processing and verification mechanism for large volume of infection data over a significant period of time for active risk assessment.

Keywords: contact tracing; blockchain; distributed computing; pandemic analysis; user data privacy.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSHC.2024.136745

International Journal of Social and Humanistic Computing, 2024 Vol.4 No.2, pp.176 - 203

Received: 11 Apr 2023
Accepted: 11 Aug 2023
Published online: 19 Feb 2024 *

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Title: TRACC: tiered real-time anonymised chain for contact-tracing

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