Longitudinal Global Positioning System Travel Data and Breach of Privacy via Enhanced Spatial and Demographic Analysis

Longitudinal Global Positioning System (GPS) travel data provide a wealth of information related to travel behavior and on-road vehicle behavior that is very valuable to researchers. Sharing the data publicly allows researchers to explore the data and create new knowledge beyond the initial research objectives. However, if any data are to be used outside a secure server, the data must be processed in such a manner that ensures that the confidentiality of the data will not be breached. High-resolution GPS data (e.g., second-by-second speed and location information), when associated with the individual households or drivers, compromise privacy and have a significant potential to harm human subjects. This paper explores how data from the Commute Atlanta study in Georgia could be processed to make it useful to researchers while participants' privacy is protected. The research developed and assessed methodologies designed to identify the individual participant's home location from processed data and then teste...