A Robust and Reliable Resource for Accessing, Sharing, and Analyzing Confidential Geospatial Research Data

Association Of American Geographers, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

This project will undertake a set of interrelated research activities to enhance a robust and reliable geospatial virtual data enclave (GVDE) that will facilitate the sharing of geospatial research data while also maintaining the confidentiality of individuals whose identities may be at risk because of the distinctive characteristics of geospatial data. This collaborative project between the American Association of Geographers (AAG), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Michigan's Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) will enhance an infrastructural resource that will advance scientific research by building capacity for data sharing in geospatial data-intensive research communities in the social, environmental, and related sciences that use geospatial data. The GVDE resource will make a wide range of geospatial, spatial statistical, and geographic information system software available to allow researchers to share, access, build on, and conduct new research involving confidential data within the enclave. It will be a secure research environment for sharing confidential geospatial research data, thereby enabling the replication of prior research involving confidential geospatial data. The GVDE will create new research infrastructure for scientists to share data so that research results are replicable and national investments in data creation are preserved for subsequent analysis. The project will train researchers in techniques to protect confidentiality in geospatial data. Graduate students will be involved in the enhancement of this infrastructure. The ability to replicate and reproduce research is a corner-stone of scientific methodology. The generation and analysis of geospatial and locational data is at the frontier of many scientific domains, yet the unique characteristics of these data present special challenges to data-sharing practices due to the need to protect the locational privacy and confidentiality of research subjects. The privacy challenges of confidential geospatial data are not yet fully understood by many members of the scientific research community. As a result, research is often impeded by uncertainty regarding geospatial data confidentiality or by a lack of effective methods for safely sharing and accessing confidential geospatial research data for analysis or replication. To address these problems, the investigators will enhance the GVDE and its core capabilities to share, access, analyze, and replicate geospatial data. They will evaluate and implement confidentiality protection techniques to enable researchers to anonymize and export maps, analyses, and visualizations derived from analyses conducted in the GVDE. They will develop and implement a researcher credentialing system to provide trained and trusted researchers with a durable digital identifier to safely access and use the GVDE. They will also ensure the long-term sustainability of the GVDE system and expand its availability to the broader geospatial research community through outreach, dissemination, and the development of training materials on system use, data confidentiality ethics, credentialing requirements, research replication, and best practices. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.