MSc Thesis Defense Announcement of Vipul Malhotra:"A Secure Proof of Delivery Scheme for Crowdsourced Last Mile Delivery Using Blockchain "

 

Date: Tuesday April 19th, 2021  

Time:  1pm-3pm 

Zoom URL:  https://zoom.us/j/98357535264?from=addon

Passcode: If interested in attending the event, contact the Graduate Secretary at csgradinfo@uwindsor.ca

 

Shipping a product from a warehouse shelf to a customer doorstep might look simple initially, but it is a complicated and expensive operation in reality. Moving the product from the last distribution hub in the distribution channel to the final destination (residential or business address), also known as Last-Mile Delivery (LMD), is the costliest and time-consuming phase.  Studies show that LMD accounts for 53% to 70% of the total cost of transportation.  

 

One of the main challenges in the LMD operations is proof-of-delivery (PoD).  It is the responsibility of any LMD solution to provide Proof of Delivery (POD) to confirm that the purchased item is delivered to the customer (buyer). It makes both sender and receiver accountable because POD acts as proof that the sender sends the package to the correct destination, and the buyer receives the product in good condition. Most of today, PoD solutions uses paper and pen to collect customer's signature as PoD and even when handheld devices are used, it only to collect buyer signature. Developing a secure and trusted PoD solution will increase logistics accuracy, improve customer experience, enhance packages visibility and tracking and reduce operational cost. 

 

 Recently, digital signature and new technologies such as blockchain introduced an opportunity to improve logistics and LMD operations. Several works in the literature proposed PoD using blockchain and other cryptographic schemes. In our research, we investigated existing work; we selected the most promising solutions in the literature and implemented those solutions to test them against several scenarios. Based on our analysis, we identified several limitations in the existing work; some of these limitations are related to security, trust, and scalability.  Finally, we propose a new PoD scheme using blockchain, blind signatures and a reputation-based trust model to overcome existing limitations in state-of-the-art PoD solutions. 

 

Keywords: last mile, proof of delivery, blind signatures, reputation-based trust model

 

Internal Reader: Dr Arunita Jaekel             

External Reader: Dr Bill Anderson              

Advisor: Dr Sherif Saad Ahmed 

Chair: Dr Imran Ahmad