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Scientific profile:

Ourania Kounadi studied Geography at Harokopeio University of Athens. Ourania's Bachelor dissertation under the title 'Analyzing Land Supply and Estimating Development Capacity’ dealt with urban sprawl in Athens and the sustainable solutions related to this phenomenon.

In 2009, she obtained her MSc degree in Geographical Information Science at University College London, Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering. Her interests include Volunteered Geographic Information and Crowd Sourcing initiatives that led her to her master thesis :‘Assessing the Quality of OpenStreetMap Data’.

While she was studying and after her graduation, Ourania worked for two years in the Geomarketing field for Delta Post - Letterbox Marketing Company,where she acquired knowledge about Geographic and Demographic targeting, area segmentation, opportunity and competitors’ analysis.

Currently, Ourania is a PhD student at the Doctoral College GIScience, at the University of Salzburg. Her research deals with Geoprivacy issues in relation to Spatial Crime Analysis.

Research Cluster: Spatialization, Media and Society

PhD Thesis Topic: Framework for Geospatial Privacy with Emphasis on Spatial Crime Analysis and Visualization

Abstract:

Geoprivacy is the privacy of our current location, our residence or other private locations. The location privacy violation may be the result of uncontrolled use of the new geospatial technologies such as GPS, mobile phones or applications in Social Media. Also, privacy can be compromised from publications in the media or scientific publications. This PhD has a focus on Geoprivacy in crime data representations. Crime maps are a common practice and frequently these maps show crime incidents as points on a map. Each incident indicates where a crime occurred and very often these locations are the victims’ home addresses. Even more, studies have shown that location data can be further linked with other personal information like identities or social security numbers. Some countries publish crime data as they support the people’s right to know. Also, scientists need crime data at a fine point level for their scientific purposes. However, publishing sensitive crime information violates the victims’ privacy. The main objective of this PhD is to develop a Geoprivacy Framework that offers cartographic display guidelines when crime data are presented on public maps or disseminated among stakeholders other than the police. This framework will ensure that data are accurately presented on maps but at the same time privacy is protected.  

Publications:

Kounadi, O.; Lampoltshammer, T.J.; Leitner, M. and Heistracher, T. (2013) Accuracy and privacy aspects in free online reverse geocoding services. In: Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 40 (2), pp. 140-153.

Research Areas:

Geoprivacy, Spatial Crime Analysis, Volunteered Geographic Information, Urban Geography