Ensuring Confidentiality of Geocoded Health Data: Assessing Geographic Masking Strategies for Individual-Level Data

Figure 2

Geocoding and reverse geocoding. Geocoding (a) is the process of assigning locations (i.e., coordinates) to address information. A tabular dataset of addresses becomes a map. Reverse geocoding (b) literally puts this in reverse and converts mapped locations to addresses. Errors in the geocoding and reverse geocoding process may result in mismatched address information; that is, the addresses obtained using reverse geocoding may not be identical to those used in the original geocoding.

(a) Fundamental process of address geocoding

(b) Fundamental process of reverse address geocoding