Ndiaye, MalickAbdulkarim, Omar Soubhi2024-09-192024-09-192024-0535.232-2024.12https://hdl.handle.net/11073/25600A Master of Science thesis in Engineering Systems Management by Omar Soubhi Abdulkarim entitled, “Blockchain for Sustainability in the Shared Economy: A Platform for Shared Last-Mile Delivery”, submitted in May 2024. Thesis advisor is Dr. Malick Ndiaye. Soft copy is available (Thesis, Completion Certificate, Approval Signatures, and AUS Archives Consent Form).The shared economy, which originated in communal resource sharing, evolved with digital platforms like Airbnb and Uber in the early 21st century, transforming various industries. However, literature suggests that while many modern shared economy models have proven to be commercially successful, few of them focus on the prospect of improving sustainability as a primary driver. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate the applicability of leveraging blockchain technology to track and improve sustainability in a shared economy scenario, while also contributing to an organization’s financial profit. A use case of shared last-mile delivery is proposed with the help of Ethereum Smart Contracts that will facilitate these instances of sharing on the blockchain, providing trust and transparency between parties. The smart contract was developed and tested on Remix IDE; a development environment commonly used for such purposes. Functionality of the entire smart contract is introduced and explored, including trial runs of each function in the system. Cost analysis shows that the shared delivery model is more cost-effective compared to independent company deliveries, with a 21.7% reduction in total travel distance. Hashgraph is also explored as a potential avenue for reduced processing costs, showcasing significantly reduced costs at the expense of increased novelty and complexity. Finally, a thorough security analysis using several Remix plugins revealed no vulnerabilities and acceptable gas cost efficiency. Five types of security checks, totalling over 200 iterations, showed 100% effectiveness in preventing integer overflow/underflow, blocking unauthorized access, correcting uninitialized storage pointers, optimizing gas usage, and handling exceptions. By providing this platform for shared delivery, the total amount of isolated deliveries, and therefore carbon emissions, will be reduced. This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge in this field and lays the groundwork for future developments and implementations of blockchain-based solutions in shared economies and last-mile delivery.en-USShared economyBlockchainLast-mile deliveryShared deliverySmart contractsThesis