The technologies of mobile communications and ubiquitous computing pervade our society, and wireless networks sense the movement of people and vehicles, generating large volumes of mobility data. This is a scenario of great opportunities and risks: on one side, mining this data can produce useful knowledge, supporting sustainable mobility and intelligent transportation systems; on the other side, individual privacy is at risk, as the mobility data contain sensitive personal information. A new multidisciplinary research area is emerging at this crossroads of mobility, data mining, and privacy.

Workshop Aim

In this context, this workshop is aimed at fostering the interdisciplinary dialogue among researchers and professionals in computer science, law, geography, social sciences, statistics, telecommunication and transportation engineering. It will also be a forum to share the research results of the European project GeoPKDD and the European coordination action KDubiq.

Key Question

Can we allow the analysis of geographically referenced data while guaranteeing the right to anonymity of the data subjects? This is both a scientific problem and a social (or ethical, or legal) challenge: the privacy issues related to the ICTs can only be addressed through an alliance of technology, legal regulations and social norms.

Bibliography


Mobility, Data Mining and Privacy
Fosca Giannotti, Dino Pedreschi (Eds.)
Springer, 2008
ISBN 978-3-540-75176-2












The right to anonymity. Anonymity, name, personal identity (in Italian)
Giusella Finocchiaro (Ed.)
Cedam, Padova, 2008