Tangles

An R package for anonymisation of spatial point patterns and raster objects.

This package achieves the relatively simple, yet useful, task of spatial anonymisation. Anonymisation is needed in situations where a data owner may not wish to share the actual spatial locations of their data, but is happy to share transformed data in a way that still permits valid spatial analysis.

Anonymisation is achieved via three modes of spatial shifts:

• Vertical shifts
• Lateral shifts
• Rotational shifts

The tangles package can entangle both non-gridded spatial point patterns and raster objects. It can also entangle data using a pre-defined entanglement sequence and can disentangle data back to their original spatial representations. Each entanglement process is given a unique hash key label to guarantee successful restoration of the original spatial structure.