An overview of data protection strategies for individual-level geocoded data

Responding to growing needs for small-scale geographic information in various research areas, data-collecting institutions are increasingly geocoding individual-level data. However, due to confidentiality concerns, external researchers typically have very limited access to these data (if at all). A growing body of literature on data protection strategies for geocoded data attempts to address these limitations by finding optimal solutions for the trade-off between privacy protection and utility preservation when broadening the access to this valuable source of information. The purpose of this paper is to systematically collect and review the literature in the field and to offer a classification of existing methods. It also includes discussions on various strategies for estimating the utility and the remaining risk of disclosure for the protected data.