SACM - United Kingdom
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://drepo.sdl.edu.sa/handle/20.500.14154/9667
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Item Restricted Assessing The Combined Impact of Blockchain, AI, And IoT on Operational Efficiency in Pharmaceutical Supply Chains: A Multi-Case Study Approach(Saudi Digital Library, 2025) Alonayzan, Lama; Dowsn, AltriciaThis thematic study examines the integration of blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT) in transforming pharmaceutical supply chains (PSCs) by enhancing their operational efficiency and resilience, based on three case studies. Aim: This study aims to critically investigate how the integrated application of these digital technologies promotes operational efficiency in PSCs. It concentrates on the adoption patterns, performance metrics, and strategic alignment of these integrated technologies with AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson as case studies. Design: This study has employed a qualitative multi-case study approach, using secondary data sources encompassing peer-reviewed academic research articles, industry reports, and company data. Thematic text analysis has been carried out to identify patterns and extract insights systematically. The analysis is grounded in three relevant theories: the Resource-Based View (RBV), the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), and the Supply Chain Resilience (SCR). Guided by these theories, the study interprets strategic resource management, technology adoption behaviours, and resilience enhancement in PSCs. Findings: The integrated use of blockchain, AI, and IoT has created a cyber-physical ecosystem in PSCs that enormously enhances practical visibility, traceability, inventory optimisation, lead-time reduction, risk mitigation, and regulatory compliance. These digital resources, in combination, have fostered productivity and supply chain resilience, especially witnessed amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, this integration also encounters barriers encompassing technical issues in the form of interoperability, cybersecurity, organisational hurdles in the form of required skills and change resistance, and regulatory challenges in the form of data privacy and complex compliance frameworks. Originality: This research is unique in that the present literature has gaps, and it fills them with a focus on the integrated impact of the simultaneous adoption of these technologies instead of adopting them in isolation, as other studies have. This study scientifically validates integrated technology advantages via three case studies, and hence, it offers real-time strategic and managerial recommendations. This study also reveals the significant role of harmonised policies and cross-sector coordination to overcome barriers toward this technological integration, and hence it enriches academia, besides the convergence of three digital technologies for resilient and efficient PSCs.12 0Item Restricted The Impact of Blockchain-Enabled Supply Chain Transparency on Sustainable Purchase Intention: Evidence Based on Saudi Consumers.(Saudi Digital Library, 2025) Babaqi, Rawan Khaled; Arunachalam, DeepakWith the rapid developments in Blockchain in supply chains, there is still a need to study the impact of this technology, especially on individuals in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The study presents a new evidence-based framework to measure the effect of Blockchain- enabled supply chain transparency (SCT) on Saudi consumers’ purchase intentions (PI) for sustainable products by developing the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) framework. Data were collected electronically through a quantitative survey questionnaire completed by 200 participants of diverse educational and age backgrounds. The findings revealed that attitude is the primary and most significant driver of PI )β = 0.738, p = 0.001(, whereas subjective norms (SN) showed no significant effect )β = 0.088, p = 0.144(. This indicates that the effect of Blockchain transparency on PI is transmitted entirely through attitude. Demographic study analyses multiple cross-sectional positive correlations between knowledge of the technology and higher educational attainment, with the [30–44] age group demonstrating greater familiarity with Blockchain compared to younger groups. Based on these findings, targeted sustainable knowledge campaigns are recommended for the younger generation, who constituted most participants. The projects should particularly focus on enhancing Blockchain knowledge among women, of whom only )23 out of 93( were found to be familiar with the technology, given the observed knowledge gap compared to men )36 out of 48(. This would minimise the technological knowledge gap and narrow the intention gap in adopting sustainable SCT-enabled products. The study suggests that it is essential to create a measure for perceived behavioural control (PBC), as its current limitations hinder its ability to capture the local market context. Additionally, longitudinal studies should be conducted to track changes in consumer behaviour in line with the growing orientation and support for sustainability.7 0Item Restricted A blockchain-based Approach for Secure, Transparent and Accountable Distributed System Environment(Saudi Digital Library, 2025) ALSHARIDAH, Ahmad Abdulrahman; Jha, Devki NandanRecent advances in distributed systems have revolutionised numerous industries by enabling efficient resource sharing and enhanced system scalability. These systems play a critical role in domains such as cloud and edge computing by supporting various applications and services. However, despite their many benefits, distributed systems face inherent trustworthiness challenges, including security threats, limited transparency, and the presence of untrusted entities. These challenges might threaten system reliability and present significant barriers to the broader adoption of distributed technologies. This thesis addresses these challenges by investigating the role of blockchain technology in enhancing trust within distributed systems. It presents three frameworks that work together to improve security, accountability, transparency, and fairness, creating a more resilient and reliable decentralised computing environment. I would like also to take the opportunity and thank the the members of my examining committee, Professor Ali Sadiq and Dr. Vlad Gonzalez for the insightful comments and valuable inputs. The first contribution is a blockchain-based auditing mechanism for cloud resource management. This system securely records resource allocation decisions, performance data, and policy compliance on an immutable ledger. By making these records transparent and tamper-proof, the mechanism provides clear evidence of service provider behaviour. This gives cloud customers and stakeholders confidence that scaling operations are conducted fairly and adhere to agreed-upon rules. The second contribution is RewardChain, an incentive mechanism for federated learning that addresses the lack of trust in traditional FL setups. By integrating blockchain to record each participant’s actions, RewardChain offers transparent and verifiable accountability. Using approximations of the Shapley value, it accurately evaluates and rewards honest contributions while identifying and penalising malicious behaviour. This approach ensures fair compensation, promotes long-term collaboration, and ultimately enhances the quality of the jointly trained models. The third framework, SecureFed, addresses data poisoning attacks in federated learning. It combines cosine similarity metrics for anomaly detection with blockchain-based validation to thoroughly analyse suspicious model updates before incorporating them into the global model. This hybrid defence strategy significantly strengthens model robustness, reducing the risk of adversarial interference and enhancing trust in learning. Together, these three frameworks illustrate how blockchain can transform distributed systems by embedding transparency, fairness, and security into their core. By ensuring accountable cloud operations, reinforcing fair incentive structures, and safeguarding models against attacks, this research paves the way for distributed systems that are more trustworthy, equitable, and robust. Ultimately, it highlights the foundation for the continued evolution of secure and reliable decentralised computing ecosystems.Item Restricted The Application of Blockchains to Railway Condition Monitoring(University of Birmingham, 2025-05) Alzahrani, Rahma A; Easton, John MAgeing infrastructure and fragmented data ownership present major challenges to remote condition monitoring technologies in the European railway sector. Despite the potential of these technologies to improve efficiency and safety, their deployment is often limited by issues related to data silos, stakeholder mistrust, and the lack of transparent, enforceable cost attribution models. This thesis investigates how blockchain and smart contract technologies can be leveraged to address these challenges. The research focuses on key questions: how blockchain can reduce centralisation and mistrust; how it can improve transparency and compliance in data cost attribution; how smart contracts can automate and streamline the attribution process; how blockchain can ensure data integrity without storing large volumes of data; and what practical applications blockchain may have in railway operations. A blockchain-based framework was designed and implemented to enable fair, transparent, and legally compliant attribution of data costs across stakeholders. The system incorporates smart contracts to enforce agreement clauses without third-party involvement. The performance of the developed framework was tested under various scenarios to assess scalability, execution efficiency, and compliance with railway sector requirements. The primary contributions of this research are: the development of a cross-border data accounting framework; the establishment of operational links between the framework and real-world business and commercial processes; and a working proof-of-concept tailored to the European rail industry. These contributions demonstrate that blockchain can serve as a practical and scalable foundation for trusted, decentralised data management in multi-stakeholder transport environments.Item Restricted Blindly Backrunning Private Transactions With Fully Homomorphic Encryption(Imperial College London, 2024-09) Althonayan, Majed; Passerat-Palmbach, JonathanBlockchains and cryptocurrencies have experienced a monumental rise over the past decade. With Ethereum alone having around 1 million transactions per day [1], making it increasingly more attractive to opportunists who attempt to extract monetary value from transactions. This is, however, often at the expense of the user. As a result, it is of paramount importance to ensure that users are protected from malicious agents who exploit the public, transparent nature of Blockchains for individual gain. A Blockchain is a chain of blocks, each of which consisting of transactions that are executed sequentially. The ability to alter this order of transactions (by insertion, removal and re-ordering of transactions) can lead to the extraction of additional value commonly referred to as Maximal Extractable Value (MEV). MEV has led to the extraction of $750 million from Ethereum before the merge [2]. Although certain forms of MEV are universally considered to have adverse effects on users and their experience, other forms of MEV, such as arbitrage and liquidations, are believed to have a positive effect in regulating the markets. This research introduces a promising solution that allows searchers to backrun transactions, leveraging the effects of arbitrage while mitigating the harmful effects of MEV. It expands on the work done by Flashbots by utilising fully homomorphic encryption to enable the blind backrunning of transactions by searchers through the fhEVM framework [3] on the UniswapV2 decentralised exchange. This paper also addresses the challenges faced by previous works, aiming to reduce the computational overhead and enhance the solution’s usability. Despite computational constraints, this paper presents a novel solution to the outlined aims through the advancement of known solutions by allowing searchers to combine multiple transactions and accept a greater number of UniswapV2 methods, thereby allowing searchers to generate complex and novel arbitrage opportunities. This advancement is aided with use of the fhEVM framework [3] which was utilised to build and deploy the solution on the public network. This paper represents a solid foundation for future research with the aim of further enhancing the use of fully homomorphic encryption in decentralised finance to create a fairer, more ethical ecosystem.16 0Item Restricted Explainability Requirement in Blockchain Smart Contracts: A Human-Centred Approach(The university of Birmingham, 2024-07) Alghanmi, Hanouf; Bahsoon, RamiBlockchain smart contracts have emerged as a transformative technology, enabling the automation and execution of contractual agreements. These self-executing software programs leverage blockchain's distributed and immutable nature to eliminate the need for third-party intermediaries. However, this new paradigm of automation and authority introduces a complex environment with technical intricacies that users are expected to understand and trust. The irreversible nature of blockchain decisions exacerbates these issues, as any mistake or misuse cannot be rectified. Current smart contract designs often neglect human-centric approaches and the exploration of trustworthiness characteristics, such as explainability. Explainability, a renowned requirement in Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) aimed at enhancing human understandability, transparency and trust, has yet to be thoroughly examined in the context of smart contracts. A noticeable gap exists in the literature concerning the early development of explainability requirements, including established methods and frameworks for addressing requirements analysis phases, design principles, evaluation of their necessity and trade-offs. Therefore, this thesis aims to advance the field of blockchain smart contract systems by introducing explainability as a design concern, fundamentally prompting requirements engineers and designers to cater to this concern during the early development phases. Specifically, we provide guidelines for explainability requirements analysis, addressing what, why, when and to whom to explain. We propose design principles for integrating explainability into the early stages of development. To tailor explainability further, we propose a human-centred framework for determining information requirements in smart contract explanations, utilising situational awareness theories to address the `what to explain' aspect. Additionally, we present `explainability purposes' as an integral resource in evaluating and designing explainability. Our approach includes a novel evaluation framework inspired by the metacognitive explanation-based theory of surprise, addressing the `why to explain' aspect. The proposed approaches have been evaluated through qualitative validations and expert feedback. We have illustrated the added value and constraints of explainability requirements in smart contracts by presenting case studies drawn from literature, industry scenarios and real-world projects. This study informs requirements engineers and designers regarding how to elicit, design and evaluate the need for explainability requirements, contributing to the advancement of the early development of smart contracts.38 0Item Restricted A Simulation Framework for Evaluating the Performance of Blockchain-based IoT Ecosystems(Newcastle University, 2024-09-05) Albshri, Adel; Solaiman, EllisRecently, it has been appealing to integrate Blockchain with IoT in several domains, such as healthcare and smart cities. This integration facilitates the decentralized processing of IoT data, enhancing cybersecurity by ensuring data integrity, preventing tampering, and strengthening privacy through decentralized trust mechanisms and resilient security measures. These features create a secure and reliable environment, mitigating potential cyber threats while ensuring non-repudiation and higher availability. However, Blockchain performance is questionable when handling massive data sets generated by complex and heterogeneous IoT applications. Thus, whether the Blockchain performance meets expectations will significantly influence the overall viability of integration. Therefore, it is crucial to evaluate the feasibility of integrating IoT and Blockchain and examine the technology readiness level before the production stage. This thesis addresses this matter by extensively investigating approaches to the performance evaluation of Blockchain-based IoT solutions. Firstly, it systematically reviews existing Blockchain simulators and identifies their strengths and limitations. Secondly, due to the lack of existing blockchain simulators specifically tailored for IoT, this thesis contributes a novel blockchain-based IoT simulator which enables investigation of blockchain performance based on adaptable design configuration choices of IoT infrastructure. The simulator benefits from lessons learnt about the strengths and limitations of existing works and considers various design requirements and views collected through questioners and focus groups of domain experts. Third, the thesis recognises the shortcomings of blockchain simulators, such as support for smart contracts. Therefore, it contributes a middleware that leverages IoT simulators to benchmark real blockchain platforms' performance, namely Hyperledger Fabric. It resolves challenges related to integrating distinctive environments: simulated IoT models with real Blockchain ecosystems. Lastly, this thesis employs Machine Learning (ML) techniques for predicting blockchain performance based on predetermined configurations. Contrariwise, it also utilises ML techniques to recommend the optimal configurations for achieving the desired level of blockchain performance.74 0Item Restricted Verification of Smart Contracts using the Interactive Theorem Prover Agda(Swansea University, 2024-07-25) Alhabardi, Fahad; Setzer, AntonThe goal of this thesis is to verify smart contracts in Blockchain. In particular, we focus on smart contracts in Bitcoin and Solidity. In order to specify the correctness of smart contracts, we use weakest preconditions. For this, we develop a model of smart contracts in the interactive theorem prover and dependent type programming language Agda and prove the correctness of smart contracts in it. In the context of Bitcoin, our verification of Bitcoin scripts consists of non-conditional and conditional scripts. For Solidity, we refer to programs using object- oriented features of Solidity, such as calling of other contracts, full recursion, and the use of gas in order to guarantee termination while having a Turing-complete language. We have developed a simulator for Solidity-style smart contracts. As a main example, we executed a reentrancy attack in our model. We have verified smart contracts in Bitcoin and Solidity using weakest precondition in Agda. Furthermore, Agda, combined with the fact that it is a theorem prover and programming language, allows the writing of verified programs, where the verification takes place in the same language in which the program is written, avoiding the problem of translation from one language to another (with possible translation mistakes).10 0Item Restricted Verification of Smart Contracts using the Interactive Theorem Prover Agda(Swansea University, 2024-07-25) Alhabardi, Fahad Faleh; Setzer, AntonThe goal of this thesis is to verify smart contracts in Blockchain. In particular, we focus on smart contracts in Bitcoin and Solidity. In order to specify the correctness of smart contracts, we use weakest preconditions. For this, we develop a model of smart contracts in the interactive theorem prover and dependent type programming language Agda and prove the correctness of smart contracts in it. In the context of Bitcoin, our verification of Bitcoin scripts consists of non-conditional and conditional scripts. For Solidity, we refer to programs using object- oriented features of Solidity, such as calling of other contracts, full recursion, and the use of gas in order to guarantee termination while having a Turing-complete language. We have developed a simulator for Solidity-style smart contracts. As a main example, we executed a reentrancy attack in our model. We have verified smart contracts in Bitcoin and Solidity using weakest precondition in Agda. Furthermore, Agda, combined with the fact that it is a theorem prover and programming language, allows the writing of verified programs, where the verification takes place in the same language in which the program is written, avoiding the problem of translation from one language to another (with possible translation mistakes).20 0Item Restricted Peer-to-Peer Accommodation Sub- letting Blockchain-based Platform(University of Technology Sydney, 2024-04-11) Alzahrani, Asma Ateeq; Hussain, FarookhThis study introduces Block2Let, a blockchain-based peer-to-peer (P2P) platform for accommodation sub-letting. A systematic literature review carried out revealed that the P2P accommodation industry relies heavily on third parties. This exposes the industry to various challenges ranging from breach of data integrity to violation of user privacy, poor transparency, and lack of trust. In addition, most existing P2P accommodation sharing platforms lack adequate decision support systems to guide property sub-leasers on fair pricing and local tourism experiences. To address these research gaps, this study develops the Block2Let, a platform that combines blockchain, smart contracts, artificial intelligence, and local experiences to provide an end-to-end solution for a complete tourism experience. The platform is based on the Ethereum blockchain which ensures the security, reliability, and transparency of transactions as property details are verified, validated, and encrypted before being stored on the blockchain. Furthermore, smart contracts are employed to automate and enforce agreements between original property owners, original leasers, and sub-leasers. Also, an AI algorithm is built to predict the optimal price of properties listed on the Block2Let marketplace. This provides a guide for sub-leasers in making informed decision when bidding for a property. Finally, the platform includes local experience offers from tourism operators. Sub-leasers who make successful bids can select from such local experience packages.32 0