Anonymization of Georeferenced Public Health Microdata

Simon Cremer¹, Lydia Jehmlich¹ and Rainer Lenz^1,

¹Cologne university of technology, arts and sciences, Cologne, Germany

Cite this paper:
Simon Cremer, Lydia Jehmlich and Rainer Lenz. Anonymization of Georeferenced Public Health Microdata. American Journal of Public Health Research. 2025; 13(6):257-262. doi: 10.12691/ajphr-13-6-1

Abstract

Whether for the use of targeted advertising measures or tracing the spatial spread of viruses such as the recent corona virus: georeferenced microdata can - depending on the attributes it is provided with - hold enormous added value for society, science and research. However, the desired information can often not be extracted despite the inherent analytical content. The reason for this is that access to personal georeferenced datasets is severely restricted, as these are subject to statutory data protection. One way out of this dilemma is to apply a suitable anonymization method that guarantees data protection without significantly reducing the analytical validity of data. Based on the EU INSPIRE directive, the statistical offices of the EU are successively implementing the georeferencing of their surveys. This paper discusses selected anonymization methods being most promising for anonymizing georeferenced health data for research purposes, as they offer scope for combinations or more specific adaptations in order to balance out the trade-off between privacy and analytical validity of georeferenced health microdata.

Keywords:
data anonymization disclosure risk health microdata location privacy spatial analysis

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