Satellite Imagery Analysis for Urban Conflict

Ivan Zaitzev · Jun 13, 2016

For some time I have been following the war in Syria in the news and with some sites that post updated maps of the conflict. I have always been a sucker for maps!
Anyway, today I was thinking that in this day and age with tools like Google Earth it should be possible to get some kind of closer look at conflicts. And sure enough, a quick google search turned this interesting article.

Satellite Imagery Analysis for Urban Conflict Documentation: Aleppo, Syria
Using information provided by AIUSA and media reports, imagery covering one hundred and eighty-two square kilometers of the city and its environs was acquired on the morning of 9 August by the Quickbird-2 satellite operated by DigitalGlobe, Inc. This acquisition coincided with reports of a major government effort to retake the neighborhood of Salaheddine in the southwestern quadrant of the city, which began the day prior.3 The second image, 4 acquired by the GeoEye, Inc. satellite IKONOS on 23 August, was chosen to capture a variety of incidents that were reported to have occurred throughout the city during the intervening two weeks.

http://www.aaas.org/aleppo
Google Earth coordinates for the military base mentioned in the text: 36°09'52.3"N 37°06'55.2"E

Bootie · Jun 13, 2016

Nice article thanks for sharing.

Ivan Zaitzev · Jun 17, 2016

Another interesting thing is that all images from Google Earth are from 2014. Google is supposed to update the whole world every 3 years so either it's about to be updated or it's not being updated for some (security?) reasons.

Here is another intersting article on Satellite imagery from Syria: http://unosat.web.cern.ch/unosat/un...TAR-UNOSAT_SyriaFourYearsOfHumanSuffering.pdf

Google Earth has an interesting feature that let's you see the old pictures of the place you are looking at, so you can see areas that where peaceful in 2012 but have been bombed and destroyed since.