This repository holds the Python ACRO package. An R wrapper package is available: ACRO-R.
ACRO (Automatic Checking of Research Outputs) is an open source tool for automating the statistical disclosure control (SDC) of research outputs. ACRO assists researchers and output checkers by distinguishing between research output that is safe to publish, output that requires further analysis, and output that cannot be published because of substantial disclosure risk.
It does this by providing a light-weight 'skin' that sits over well-known analysis tools, in a variety of languages researchers might use. This adds functionality to:
- identify potentially disclosive outputs against a range of commonly used disclosure tests;
- suppress outputs where required;
- report reasons for suppression;
- produce simple summary documents TRE staff can use to streamline their workflow.
ACRO can be installed via PyPI.
If installed in this way, the example notebooks and the data files used therein will need to be copied from the repository.
$ pip install acro
ACRO currently depends on an older version of Pandas (~1.5.0) for which no pre-compiled wheels are available within pip for Python 3.12. Therefore, in this scenario, Pandas must be built from source. This requires the installation of a C++ compiler before pip installing acro.
For Windows, Microsoft Visual Studio and the C++ build tools will likely need to be installed first.
See the example notebooks for:
The github-pages contains pre-built documentation.
For training videos about ACRO, see training videos.
See CONTRIBUTING.md
This work was funded by UK Research and Innovation under Grant Number MC_PC_23006 as part of Phase 1 of the DARE UK (Data and Analytics Research Environments UK) programme, delivered in partnership with Health Data Research UK (HDR UK) and Administrative Data Research UK (ADR UK). The specific project was Semi-Automatic Checking of Research Outputs (SACRO).
