Recent advances in optimization techniques for statistical tabular data protection

One of the main services of National Statistical Agencies (NSAs) for the current Information Society is the dissemination of large amounts of tabular data, which is obtained from microdata by crossing one or more categorical variables. NSAs must guarantee that no confidential individual information can be obtained from the released tabular data. Several statistical disclosure control methods are available for this purpose. These methods result in large linear, mixed integer linear, or quadratic mixed integer linear optimization problems. This paper reviews some of the existing approaches, with an emphasis on two of them: cell suppression problem (CSP) and controlled tabular adjustment (CTA). CSP and CTA have concentrated most of the recent research in the tabular data protection field. The particular focus of this work is on methods and results of practical interest for end-users (mostly, NSAs). Therefore, in addition to the resulting optimization models and solution approaches, computational results comparing the main optimization techniques – both optimal and heuristic – using real-world instances are also presented.

► Invited review about recent developments in statistical tabular data protection. ► Mainly focuses on cell suppression and controlled tabular adjustment. ► Unlike other reviews, it presents both optimization models and computational results. ► Specially relevant for end-users (Eurostat or national statistical institutes). ► Computationally compares some protection methods under the same conditions. ► Suggests two new approaches to deal with the “singleton problem” in cell suppression.