Since the beginning of Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip, launched after the shock caused by the Hamas massacres, on October 7, 2023, the international press has not been able to enter the enclave – except for rare and strictly brief visits. supervised by the Israeli army.
The massive bombing and ground offensive carried out since October 27, 2023 have had devastating effects on the dense buildings of the Gaza Strip.
Unable to directly measure the extent of the devastation on the ground, the infographic service of the World He was able to rely on two types of sources to map them.
On the one hand, the testimonies, videos and photographs of Palestinian journalists and civilians trapped there, which document the disappearance of entire neighborhoods under the rubble. On the other, satellite images.
Satellite and private images
Thanks to these images, produced by both public satellite constellations (European Space Agency, NASA, etc.) and those of private actors (Maxar, Planet Labs, etc.), two researchers based in the United States, Corey Scher, a student at doctorate Doctor in earth sciences, specialist in natural disasters and political conflicts at the Graduate Center of New York University, and Jamon Van Den Hoek, professor of geography at Oregon State University, have followed the evolution of the destruction in the Gaza Strip.
The researchers produced these maps using data collected by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 SAR (Synthetic-Aperture Radar) satellites, a joint initiative of the European Commission and the European Space Agency, with a resolution of 10 meters per pixel. SAR radars have the advantage of collecting information day and night, whatever the weather conditions (cloudiness, lack of lighting, etc.).
Unable to verify their data on the ground, they cross-referenced it with assessments published by Unosat, the United Nations satellite center, as well as with very high-resolution commercial satellite images, up to 30 centimeters per pixel.
This allows for the preparation of a detailed map of the probable damage caused to human constructions in the Gaza Strip, its methodology not being applicable to potential damage in vegetated areas (agricultural regions, natural spaces). As specified in their methodology, “Given the likely presence of very small-scale damage that Sentinel-1 satellites are not capable of detecting, these maps likely provide a conservative estimate of the areas affected by destruction.”.
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