World grid square codes: Definition and an example of world grid square data

摘要

Grid square statistics enable us to both protect privacy and analyze socioeconomic activities and compress an amount of data comparing original point data. We can compare and merge different grid square statistics and recalculate new grid square statistics from different grid square statistics without regard to privacy issues. Japan has industrial and government standards to define grid square codes to generate grid square statistics, which are defined in the Japan Industrial Standard X0410. This paper proposes a novel procedure to define global grid square codes for six levels, hierarchically modifying Japanese grid square codes. We show a procedure to extend JIS X0410 to grid square codes for worldwide usage, which we call world grid square codes and an example of grid square data focused on administrative areas for 252 countries and regions. We explain three case studies to employ grid square statistics and discuss how to apply several anonymization models to generating grid square statistics.