United Kingdom: “ARCHANGEL: Securing Our National Archives with AI and Blockchain”

From the University of Surrey:

In a paper to be presented at the CVPR conference in Los Angeles in June, Surrey’s Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing (CVSSP) explain how they have been working with the Open Data Institute and the National Archives in the UK to develop ARCHANGEL – a highly secure, decentralised computer vision and blockchain based system that will safeguard the long-term future of digital video archives.

According to an explanation by an expert at bitcoin prime, blockchain is the technology behind crypto-currencies like Bitcoin. The University of Surrey is exploring alternative non-financial uses of blockchain for the public good.  ARCHANGEL’s blockchain works as a database maintained by multiple archives; everyone can check and add records, but no one can change them. As no data can be modified, the integrity of the historical record remains intact.

ARCHANGEL is specifically built to identify incidences of accidental modifications or tampering with the digital public record, and it is backed up by a proof-of-authority blockchain system. The new system has been trialed in national government archives of the UK, Estonia, Norway, Australia and the US (NARA).

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ARCHANGEL was recently recognised as a research highlight in 10 years of the UKRI Digital Economy programme, which funds the project via the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). ARCHANGEL is part of the Surrey blockchain testbed. The testbed includes more than £3.5 million of UKRI and EU funded projects in this emerging technology.

John Sheridan, Digital Director of the National Archives said “Exploring blockchain technology together with some of the world’s leading archives, the ARCHANGEL project has shown, for real, how archives might combine forces to protect and assure vital digital evidence for the future. ARCHANGEL has been an outstanding partnership that has delivered ground breaking research into the practicalities of using blockchain to assure trust in large scale digital archives.”

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Read the Full Paper

Read the Complete U. of Surrey Post

Direct to ARCHANGEL Project Website

See Also: infoDOCKET Post From June 6, 2018: UK: National Archives Investigating Use of Blockchain

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Data Files, Digital Collections, Journal Articles, News