Masinde, B.K.; Gevaert, C.M.; Nagenborg, M.H.; Zevenbergen, J.A. Group-Privacy Threats for Geodata in the Humanitarian Context. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf.2023, 12, 393.
Masinde, B.K.; Gevaert, C.M.; Nagenborg, M.H.; Zevenbergen, J.A. Group-Privacy Threats for Geodata in the Humanitarian Context. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2023, 12, 393.
Masinde, B.K.; Gevaert, C.M.; Nagenborg, M.H.; Zevenbergen, J.A. Group-Privacy Threats for Geodata in the Humanitarian Context. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf.2023, 12, 393.
Masinde, B.K.; Gevaert, C.M.; Nagenborg, M.H.; Zevenbergen, J.A. Group-Privacy Threats for Geodata in the Humanitarian Context. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2023, 12, 393.
Abstract
The role of geodata technologies in humanitarian action is arguably indispensable in determining when, where and who needs aid before, during and after a disaster. However, despite the advantages of using geodata technologies in humanitarianism (i.e., fast and efficient aid distribution), several ethical challenges arise including privacy. The focus has been on individual privacy, however, in this article we focus on group privacy whose debates has recently gained attention. We approach privacy through the lens of informational harms that undermine autonomy of groups and control of knowledge over them. Using demographically identifiable information (DII) as a definition for groups, we first assess how these are derived from geodata types used in humanitarian DRRM. Secondly, we discuss four informational harm threat models: (i) biases from missing/underrepresented categories, (ii) the mosaic effect – unintentional sensitive knowledge discovery from combining disparate datasets, (iii) misuse of data (whether it is shared or not); and (iv) cost-benefit analysis (cost of protection vs. risk of misuse). Lastly, borrowing from triage in emergency medicine, we propose a geodata triage as a possible method for practitioners to identify, prioritize, and mitigate these four group privacy harms.
Keywords
geodata; group privacy; demographically identifiable information; humanitarianism; disasters, threat models
Subject
Social Sciences, Geography, Planning and Development
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
