Abstract
Trajectory datasets are being generated in great volumes due to high levels of Global Positioning System (GPS) and Location-Based Services (LBS) use. Such data are increasingly being collected for a variety of academic, industrial and recreational reasons, sometimes together with other strands of personal data such as socio-demographic, social survey and other sensor data carried/worn by the person. In such cases, not only are movement data of a person available but also data on potentially a wide variety of other personal and household attributes. Making such person-level data available for analytics opens up the possibility of new directions in analysing, studying and understanding human behaviour, which is typically not possible with GPS trajectory datasets alone. At the same time, the GPS data should be released in a privacy-preserving way that takes into account the possibility of re-identification of individuals from quasi-identifiers available from other data strands. De-identification in these strands may be risked due to uniquely identifiable information on significant locations and other spatial behaviours and choices detected from GPS trajectories. Using a multimodal dataset that includes a GPS archive from 358 individuals, and by considering a number of alternative privacy-enhancing approaches, we look at the potential for privacy preservation when personally-identifiable data are available from multiple data strands, for the specific purpose of data to be released for transport research.
Highlights
Global Positioning System (GPS) movement data have stimulated a great deal of research and development interest due to significant proliferation of mobile devices worldwide leading to voluminous amounts of mobility data that support smart location-based apps and Web 2.0 applications
In the case of mobility services, the private information possessed by a traveler potentially comprises their identity, current location, origin and destination of travel, journey time, locational preferences and so on, requiring locational privacy preserving solutions from technological, legal, consumer-awareness building perspectives (Thakuriah and Geers, 2013)
The quality of specific privacy preserving approaches are use-dependent; as GPS data are obtained from on-line and off-line sources, different protection methods have to be designed for different purposes or end uses
Summary
GPS movement data have stimulated a great deal of research and development interest due to significant proliferation of mobile devices worldwide leading to voluminous amounts of mobility data that support smart location-based apps and Web 2.0 applications. Privacy of location called geoprivacy or locational privacy is a person’s right to protect his or her location information from disclosure, or to determine the extent to which the data can be shared (Duckham and Kulik, 2006; Cottrill and Thakuriah, 2015). Publishing and exploring such data is essential to improve transportation services and to better understand the dynamics of urban areas and regional economies. The quality of specific privacy preserving approaches are use-dependent; as GPS data are obtained from on-line and off-line sources, different protection methods have to be designed for different purposes or end uses
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