GEOINT and Satellite Imagery for OSINT Investigators

Satellite imagery used to be exclusive to intelligence agencies. Now it's a go-to for open-source investigations. Commercial satellites capture the Earth's surface at high resolution. Much of this data is free.

For OSINT investigators, GEOINT means verifying events on the ground, tracking infrastructure changes, pinpointing where a photo or video was taken, analyzing activity patterns over time.

This guide covers sources, tools, and methodology for using satellite imagery in open-source investigations.

What Satellite Imagery Can Answer

Satellite imagery confirms or refutes event claims. Did a building get bombed? Compare images from different dates. See changes over time: construction or destruction, vehicle movement.

GEOINT techniques geolocate photos and videos by matching landmarks, terrain, infrastructure to satellite images. This provides context and scale. The technique shows relationships between objects that ground-level photography misses.

Free Satellite Imagery Sources

Google Earth Pro

Google Earth Pro has decent high-res imagery for most of the planet. You can go back to the mid-90s with historical imagery.

The timeline slider is useful. Pick a spot, move the slider, and see the changes over time. Updates happen faster in cities than in rural areas. That's just how it is.

Sentinel Hub EO Browser

The European Space Agency's Sentinel satellites serve up free multispectral imagery. Resolution is 10 meters, refreshed globally every 5 days.

EO Browser is the portal. You can query and download Sentinel-2 imagery. It pinpoints big changes, such as construction, burn scars, shifts in land cover.

Multispectral data does work. The data can be used for vegetation health, water extent, fire hotspots.

NASA Worldview

NASA's Worldview serves up daily global satellite imagery. MODIS and VIIRS feed it, at 250-500m resolution. Individual buildings aren't visible. It updates daily. This is good for tracking disasters, smoke plumes, and severe weather.

USGS Earth Explorer

Earth Explorer offers access to the Landsat archive, which dates back to 1972. The service provides 30m resolution with Landsat 8 and 9. This resolution is suitable for observing changes over decades.

Planet Labs (Limited Free Access)

Planet Labs operates a satellite constellation providing daily coverage of the entire Earth, with a resolution of 3-5 meters. This resolution is sufficient to track vehicles and small buildings.

The company offers free access to its data for specific projects, such as schools, newsrooms, and disaster response teams.

Commercial Sources Worth Knowing

Maxar (formerly DigitalGlobe)

Maxar runs the WorldView satellite constellation. It shoots 30cm resolution imagery, the baseline for most investigative work.

At this level of detail, you can pick out individual people, what kind of vehicle they're in, and smaller objects on the ground.

Maxar offers free imagery through its Open Data Program, which focuses on major disasters, including floods, wildfires, and hurricanes.

Airbus Defence & Space

Airbus runs Pléiades Neo at 30cm resolution, on par with Maxar. Though not as widely used in Western investigative journalism, it still provides useful information.

Satellogic

Satellogic offers sub-meter imagery at a lower cost. They're expanding fast, worth keeping an eye on as the commercial market grows.

Satellogic provides high-resolution images. Their prices are more accessible. A player to watch in the evolving commercial space.

Tools for Geolocation

Geolocation works by matching details in a photo or video to satellite imagery. You find a location by identifying features like roads, buildings, or terrain that appear in both your ground-level media and satellite views.

Google Earth Street View Integration

Google Earth's Street View layers provide ground-level panoramic photos, which you can compare to your subject image. This comparison helps identify candidate locations.

SunCalc and ShadowCalc

Shadows in photos hold clues about the Sun's position, which is determined by date, time, and location. The SunCalc tool takes a location and date as input and predicts where shadows should fall. You can use it to narrow down a location; areas where the shadow angle doesn't match can be ruled out. Alternatively, one can input several locations into SunCalc, compare the results, and see which one matches. The tool considers the Sun's position based on date, time, and location, including latitude, longitude, and time zone. It provides information on the Sun's altitude, azimuth, and distance from the location. SunCalc is useful for analyzing photos and determining the location where they were taken. The process involves entering the date, time, and location into SunCalc, then comparing the predicted shadow angles with those in the photo. Locations where the shadow angles do not match can be eliminated. The tool helps to identify the correct location by process of elimination. It can be used for various purposes, such as historical research, photography, or simply solving a mystery. The accuracy of SunCalc depends on the accuracy of the input data, including date, time, and location. Several factors can affect the accuracy, latitude, longitude, time zone.

Overpass Turbo and OpenStreetMap

For locating specific infrastructure, OpenStreetMap paired with Overpass API lets you query tagged features by geography. See something weird in an image? Overpass can pull every tagged instance of that thing in the area.

Output: For locating specific infrastructure, OpenStreetMap paired with Overpass API lets you query tagged features by geography. See something weird in an image? Overpass can pull every tagged instance of that thing in the area.

MapChecking

MapChecking overlays crowd density estimates on satellite imagery, estimating the number of people present. Journalists and NGOs use it to independently verify attendance claims.

Change Detection Methodology

Change detection is about finding differences over time. You start with a baseline image. Then you gather a series of images taken on specific dates. Next, you methodically compare each image to the baseline. Document each change with precise coordinates. Verify your findings against other open-source intelligence.

Geolocation Technique: The Landmark Method

The landmark method relies on visible features. Identify big picture geography, then infrastructure, and finally details like building architecture. Shadow analysis confirms the location.

Bellingcat's rundown of this method serves as a go-to resource for situations such as conflict zones, plane crashes, and human rights abuses.

Legal and Ethical Considerations

Satellite imagery analysis taps into openly available data. The outputs carry ethical weight. Publishing precise coordinates of sensitive locations can enable harm. Investigators must consider who sees their analysis, what they might do with the spatial information.