SBIR Phase I: R&D for Water Efficiency, Management and Markets Utilizing Distributed Ledger Technology

这一小企业创新研究项目的广泛影响将显著改善对水权持有者的经济激励，使他们能够节约用水并有效利用水资源。西部各州面临的最大困难之一是水权持有者缺乏有效管理水资源的动力。如果持有者没有每年使用全部的水，他们就有可能把未使用的部分返还给国家。在商业上，尽管季节性水租赁的需求高达数十亿美元——这将满足每年的用水需求——但水持有者没有地方，也没有能力销售和租赁他们未使用的水。这种方法使用拟议的分布式账本技术（DLT），允许持有者在其平台上跟踪和记录他们的水权信息。反过来，用水用户将最终获得传统上为其他财产交易提供信息的信息——所有权历史、用水情况、可比交易和本地化定价。有了这些信息，我们的客户就形成了一个市场，在这个市场上，短期和长期交易都可以快速、轻松地进行。总而言之，通过创建工具和接口来数字化水权并实现简单执行的水交易，DLT将为整个西方的水市场提供动力并推动高效用水。该SBIR第一阶段项目建议研究和开发分布式账本（DL）代币化和分散分布式文件系统（DDFS）的独特组合，以产生物理水权和使用以及相关法律材料和数据的强大数字孪生。DL代币代表政府授予用户的法定水量。DDFS允许以公开、不可变的方式存储与水权有关的关键信息，包括所有权和使用历史，并锚定在DL交易中。这种方法为水提供了一定程度的信任、透明度和来源，这是目前美国所缺乏的。目前的市场状况使得普通的水务业主和管理者不可能了解他们的水务资产的价值。由DL和DDFS支持的特定于水的市场使买卖双方都能够以最低的成本高效地查看、审查和交易水资产。第一阶段的研究和开发将建立必要的基础设施，以填充这些市场。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project will provide a significant improvement in economic incentives for water rights holders to conserve and efficiently deploy their water. One of the greatest struggles facing the Western States is the disincentive for water rights holders to efficiently manage their water. If holders don’t use the entirety of their water each year, they risk losing the unused portion back to the State. Commercially, despite a billion-dollar demand for seasonal leasing of water—which would satisfy annual use requirements—water holders have no place and little ability to market and lease their unused water. This approach using the proposed distributed ledger technology (DLT), allows holders to track and log their water rights information on its platform. In turn, water users will finally have access to information that traditionally informs other property transactions—title history, water usage, comparable transactions, and localized pricing. With that information, our customers populate a marketplace where short-term and long-term transactions can be quickly and easily transacted. In sum, by creating the tools and interfaces to digitize water rights and enable simple-to-execute water transactions, DLT will power water markets and drive efficient water use throughout the West.This SBIR Phase I project proposes to research and develop a unique combination of distributed ledger (DL) tokenization and a decentralized distributed file system (DDFS) to produce a robust digital twin of both physical water rights and usage, as well as the associated legal materials and data. DL tokens represent the legal quantity of water that has been granted to the user by the government. DDFS allows the storage of key information pertaining to the water rights—including title and use history—in a public, immutable manner, anchored in the DL transactions. This approach provides a level of trust, transparency and provenance for water that is currently absent in the United States. The current state of the market—makes it impossible for the average water owner and manager to have any insight into the value of their water assets. Water-specific marketplaces backed by DL and DDFS allow both buyers and sellers the ability to view, vet, and transact water assets efficiently and with minimal cost. This first phase of research and development will establish the requisite infrastructure to populate those marketplaces.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.