Spatial Anonymization#
In the geo-enhancement process, household survey coordinates have to be anonymized before they can be disseminated. The anonymization process is an important part of this process as it has significant implications in usage of the geo-variables being disseminated as well as the privacy implicsctions for the high confidential household level coordinates. In this section, we address key aspects of this process.
Overview of Anonymization Techniques#
In this work, we use the UNSD report developed by a team consisting of World Bank, DHS program and other UN agencies as one of the main source of best practices for implementing anonymization, quantifying re-identification risks and more.
Tools for Spatial Anonymization#
In this work, we use two main tools built with Python as follows:
spatial-anonymization- A Python package for implementing different anonymization techniques.
ArcGIS Scripts. The standard anonyimization procedure proposed by the DHS program was implemented in ArcGIS utulizing arcPy. This script is still being used to generate anonymized coordinates in ArcGIS.