What I Learned from Geolocating 1,000 Satellite Images

E-International Relations | William Goodhind

William Goodhind cataloged 1,000 satellite images of armed conflict between 2020 and 2024 to build a chronological open-source research archive called The Vault. High-resolution commercial imagery remains financially restricted for independent researchers, forcing reliance on scattered media releases and public reports. Mainstream news outlets routinely publish these visual snapshots primarily as illustrative commodities to drive readership through depictions of war damage.

Open-source intelligence investigators instead deploy this spatial data within methodical frameworks to establish ground truth, verify claims, and track military losses. The curation process revealed significant discrepancies in data provenance, forcing analysts to filter out content farms and syndicated aggregators that frequently strip timestamps and mislabel locations. Reliable verification depends heavily on tracing imagery back to primary providers such as Maxar Technologies and Planet Labs.

Comment

Commercial high-resolution satellite imagery providers such as Maxar Technologies and Planet Labs occupy a central role in modern conflict verification. When media outlets and open-source investigators process feeds from these constellations, the absence of standardized metadata routinely complicates precise spatial attribution. This friction exposes a heavy reliance on primary vendor feeds to bypass syndicated inaccuracies.

Strategic Question for Discussion

How does the reliance on commercial satellite imagery providers like Maxar Technologies and Planet Labs shape the verification of conflict zones when state actors restrict primary geospatial reporting?

The reliance on commercial providers creates a dual reality where transparency expands rapidly through private channels while remaining vulnerable to corporate archiving decisions and data filtering. This dynamic shifts verification authority from traditional state intelligence agencies toward decentralized open-source networks.

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