Geoprivacy, confidentiality and data sharing in research & practice

Motivation and aim

Research and practice have become increasingly reliant on geodata. This development creates demand for new privacy-preserving ways of data sharing and storage. The characteristics of georeferenced data present unique challenges for digital security and privacy.

The aim of Geoprivacy initiative is to create arenas of discussion about the obstacles and methods for data storage and sharing in order to support a growing geospatial interdisciplinary community of researchers; tight linked to society’s demands. The intention is to promote new collaborations and in the longer term, to build international teams dedicated to research reproducibility and data sharing in line with the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

Our interdisciplinary team is composed of many disciplines across the three universities (Geography, Criminology, Urban Planning, Economics, Ethics and Philosophy, Data Science and Engineering) in collaboration with practitioners. We draw on our experience and expertise in these areas to discuss challenges of geodata privacy and explore areas for future work on identifying sustainable practice. This seed funding is crucial to strengthen the existent collaborative links between KTH and Manchester University in particular.

Our collaboration is primarily based on organising a series on meetings (3-4 webinars) and a colloquium in Stockholm hosted by KTH and SU, late Spring 2022, starting 1st September 2021 and ending 30th June 2022. Extra activities including a training webinar for PhD students/practitioners and early career researchers about geodata privacy are also part of our collaborative agenda.

Each workshop will lead to a short written output available in a joint website of this collaborative network, and informal outputs such as blogs, feeds in social media and the similar. When relevant, our students in Stockholm and in Manchester will take part in these activities.