VICBO – An Ontology-Enhanced Blockchain for Efficient and Adaptive Vehicle Insurance Claim Management

Abstract

Vehicle insurance systems face ongoing challenges related to transparency, fraud prevention and the efficient handling of claims, particularly in contexts involving jurisdictional variability and diverse documentation requirements. This paper introduces VICBO (Vehicle Insurance Claim based on Blockchain and Ontology), a hybrid architecture designed to support transparent, automated, and context-aware vehicle insurance claim management. The system integrates blockchain-based smart contracts with a domain ontology named VICOn, developed using the Web Ontology Language (OWL), which models insurance entities, processes, and policies. Semantic rules, expressed in Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL), enable the evaluation of dynamic conditions such as document requirements, eligibility constraints, and jurisdiction-specific rules. The architecture also leverages the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) for decentralized off-chain storage, and integrates semantic reasoning with blockchain execution to guide smart contract decisions. To validate VICBO, a prototype was implemented using Hyperledger Fabric as the underlying blockchain platform. While the VICOn ontology was evaluated through scenario-based testing using SPARQL queries, the VICBO system was tested under varying transaction rates. Results demonstrate that VICBO achieves both semantic adaptability and operational efficiency, highlighting the promise of combining ontological reasoning with blockchain infrastructure in next-generation vehicle insurance systems.