Street masking: a network-based geographic mask for easily protecting geoprivacy.

Background: Geographic masks are techniques used to protect individual privacy in published maps but are highly under-utilized in research. This leads to continual violations of individual privacy, as sensitive health records are put at risk in unmasked maps. New approaches to geographic masking are required that foster accessibility and ease of use, such that they become more widely adopted.

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

Public health datasets increasingly use geographic identifiers such as an individual's address. Geocoding these addresses often provides new insights since it becomes possible to examine spatial patterns and associations. Address information is typically considered confidential and is therefore not released or shared with others.

Children at risk: measuring racial/ethnic disparities in potential exposure to air pollution at school and home.

Study Objective: This paper addresses the environmental justice implications of children's health by exploring racial/ethnic disparities in potential exposure to air pollution, based on both school and home locations of children and three different types of pollution sources, in Orange County, Florida, USA.

Methods: Using geocoded school and residence locations of 151 709 children enrolled in the public school system, distribution functions of proximity to the nearest source are generated for each type of air pollution source in order to compare the exposure potential of white, Hispanic, and black children. Discrete buffer distances are utilised to provide quantitative comparisons for statistical testing.

Error and bias in determining exposure potential of children at school locations using proximity-based GIS techniques.

Background: The widespread availability of powerful tools in commercial geographic information system (GIS) software has made address geocoding a widely employed technique in spatial epidemiologic studies.

Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the effect of the positional error in geocoding on the analysis of exposure to traffic-related air pollution of children at school locations.

Methods: For a case study of Orange County, Florida, we determined the positional error of geocoding of school locations through comparisons with a parcel database and digital orthophotography.

Influence of geocoding quality on environmental exposure assessment of children living near high traffic roads.

Background: The widespread availability of powerful geocoding tools in commercial GIS software and the interest in spatial analysis at the individual level have made address geocoding a widely employed technique in epidemiological studies. This study determined the effect of the positional error in street geocoding on the analysis of traffic-related air pollution on children.

Methods: For a case-study of a large sample of school children in Orange County, Florida (n = 104,865) the positional error of street geocoding was determined through comparison with a parcel database.

Improving environmental exposure analysis using cumulative distribution functions and individual geocoding.

Background: Assessments of environmental exposure and health risks that utilize Geographic Information Systems (GIS) often make simplifying assumptions when using: (a) one or more discrete buffer distances to define the spatial extent of impacted regions, and (b) aggregated demographic data at the level of census enumeration units to derive the characteristics of the potentially exposed population. A case-study of school children in Orange County, Florida, is used to demonstrate how these limitations can be overcome by the application of cumulative distribution functions (CDFs) and individual geocoded locations. Exposure potential for 159,923 school children was determined at the childrens' home residences and at school locations by determining the distance to the nearest gasoline station, stationary air pollution source, and industrial facility listed in the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI).