Geolocating conflicts in Fall 2022 with various methods, and a preview of the new tool Atlos

Chris Osieck
16 min readOct 8, 2022

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Image by Ingo Joseph, Pexels.com

Azerbaijan-Armenia, Kyzgyristan-Tajikistan, Israel-Palestine

Lately it has been a period of chaos in which many lives were lost and oppression has taken place. After Russia decided to invade Ukraine and the Ukrainian army (with support from the West) managed to defend itself well, it seemed to me that there was light at the end of the dark tunnel. Perhaps I fell prey to wishful thinking because while the entire Western world has spoken out about imperialism being no longer of our time, conflicts such as those between Azerbaijan and Armenia or Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are still emerging.

The same is true of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which international law has been violated repeatedly and policies used by the Israeli government are similar to South African apartheid. Perhaps it is because I really care about people that I invest so much of my time in this. It is important to me that issues like this are raised and documented in the hope that one day justice comes.

Videos of the conflict came crashing onto online platforms as if they were silver ashes from the shelling. As an open source researcher, in my experience, it does not always feel like I am safely behind my laptop, but instead feels like I am literally in that area. If you truly care about human lives, you sympathize with what innocent civilians experience when they see their life’s joy, their home, suddenly collapse because of the selfishness of the conflict’s leaders.

In this article, I briefly describe the background of each conflict as well as how I geolocated the incidents using different methodologies.

The battle between Azerbaijan and Armenia

Several media sources reported another fight between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Unfortunately, more than armed forces were involved.. The bombings of Armenian civilian targets in the villages of Sotk, Goris, and Jermuk show that this is not just about the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. It is the same mentality of total warfare, resulting in the obliteration of human life and dignity, that the world saw in Bucha, Ukraine.

The Azerbaijani shelling of Jermuk

A video was shared on September, 13th, 2022 by the user Arman Tatoyan which showed that the city of Jermuk (located 53 km east of Yeghegnadzor, the provincial capital of Vajots Dzor) was shelled by the Azerbaijani military.

Video is archived here.

The video was filmed by someone driving on the road that Google Maps calls the H42 highway. I started taking note of small things that stood out to me on the video. A video and the way that it was filmed often tells you what is going through the mind of the person recording. At first, the person is driving slowly, taking their time recording and moving the camera side to side. Eventually, the car speeds up. This indicates to me that the driver was possibly stunned by what had happened, and drove away as quickly as possible upon realizing it was not safe to be there.

There were a pair of flat buildings with red roofs and one building with a white roof, all of which had a triangular-shaped roof. Lastly, the mountains were an extra verification point.

So fasten your seatbelt, because we are taking a drive together (via Google Maps) on highway H42 near Jermuk, to try and attempt to find the location shown in the video.

Image by Google Maps

We are driving somewhere that could be called a meadow. There is no town in sight yet; but geolocation needs the skill of patience and an infinite sense of curiosity.

“Driving” on the highway toward Jermuk, I searched for about ten minutes until I saw the following imagery:

Image by Google Maps

That looks quite familiar, right? One thing that I always like to do is see if this is similar to the StreetView feature of Google Maps. At first glance, we have a frame that looks quite close to what I came across while virtually driving around near the city of Jermuk.

The three buildings (two with a red roof, one with a white roof), the unknown structure between them, and the mountains appear to be a match when comparing:

Image by Google Maps

It is always good to have multiple ways to verify a geolocation. Let’s also start using Zoom.Earth. This is a tool that can be useful in cases of war or fires because it provides nearly real-time weather imagery, and consists of an “active fire layer” which not only spots heat but also has the option to go back in time. This is especially useful in this case to see if the shelling hit buildings, as well as to confirm the geolocation.

Image by Zoom.Earth

It’s difficult to determine if buildings got hit in this case, but by looking at the images from Zoom.Earth, you can say that the area behind the buildings was possibly hit, which could mean people who were there at that moment may have been harmed.

Image by Google Earth

Using a drone video

I’ve noticed that quite a few times there are videos shared on Twitter, generally retweeted from official military sources, from the perspective of a drone.

While we all know drones can be a weapon of destruction, the images and recordings display a difference in power between those who investigate (ordinary citizens like me) and those who are in charge (political leaders and armies).

The images from the drone (in this case a Bayraktar TB2) have a much sharper resolution from the air than we have from applications such as Google Earth Pro (GEP). With the skills we learn while conducting open source research, we can use this powerful tool to our advantage and mimic the drone’s recording.

Video is archived here
Image by Google Earth

By rotating our screen in GEP and imitating the drone from the Azerbaijani army, we can looking closely at buildings or patterns in the video and attempt to match them. At 0:46, there are two large lengthy constructions (marked in orange below), with another next to them half their size (marked blue), and a house or office-type of building (marked pink) with military vehicles nearby at 1:21.

This confirms that the geolocation is indeed the military base that is located west of Sotk.

Image by Google Earth

Kyzgyristan-Tajikistan border clashes

The two neighbors, once united in the Soviet Union, have been clashing with each other in limited areas along their shared border since its breakup. Previously, the last major escalation occurred in April 2021, as a result of disagreements over the placement of cameras near a water reservoir that both countries claim is on their territory. At least 55 people were killed in the fighting at that time.

Fighting between the two countries began again in September of this year, but the exact reason for it is unclear. The cease-fire agreed upon Friday, September 16, 2022 between the leaders of the two Central Asian countries went into effect at midnight on September 17th, 2022. During that weekend, the agreements appear to have been respected: neither side reported fighting or casualties.

While the ceasefire is good news, conflict in this chaotic and painful time must still be documented.

Fighting in the Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border area

It is common for researchers engaged in geolocation to look for common cues in the photograph or video. Advertising signs, buildings, stores, apartment buildings, traffic signs, and bus stops help us orient ourselves. But sometimes we run into situations where there are few or none of those landmarks. But in this case, we still have mountains to use to geolocate.

Let me be clear: geolocation is not for the individual who wants quick results to score a euphoric high. This work is not about getting as many likes or shares as possible. It is about one thing: verifying and archiving the right information. You will experience moments where you start biting your nails, get frustrated or lost, and spend hours looking for the right spot. The key here is to not give up, and to also take time to rest so that you can then look again, full of focus.

Video is archived here

The border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan is 984 kilometers (611 miles) long, so it took me quite a long time to move along it and find the place that resembled the video. At one point, I discovered a spot that had three patterns that I recognized: a building that reminded me of a farmer’s shack; another building that appeared to be part of the compound; and a bush.

Still, I was not fully convinced. I missed the valley between the mountains. I took the coordinates and put them into PeakVisor to get a better look at the mountain.

Image by PeakVisor

The mountain I saw in PeakVisor seemed similar to the one in the video. So again, I made notes of aspects in the video that stood out to me.

I moved into the position of the soldier with the AK-47, placing myself into his perspective using Google Earth Pro. I could see the following:

Image by Google Earth

I was pretty sure this was the geolocation. So the battle took place near Surkh, a village in northern Tajikistan.

Image by Google Earth

Finding the Multiple Launch Rocket System

As I was investigating, I also saw a clip of a Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) driving through a city called Khujand. Curious as to where in Khujand this would have taken place, I decided to take a look in Mapillary, which I learned about when reading the investigation on the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh by Bellingcat. Mapillary is a crowd-sourced platform that collects street-level imagery from dashboard and roof-mounted cameras.

Video is archived here

I started driving around Khujand, starting all the way north. For a while, I was taking the wrong way until I decided to go southeast. At one point I discovered a road where the images from Mapillary stopped, but had the same lampposts as the ones in the video, and looked like the road where the MLRS was driving.

Image by Mapillary

I quickly took a screenshot. It is important to save every clue you have, at all times, so you can refer back to them later. Copy the URL and save it in a document.

By using a Chrome plugin, OpenSwitchMaps, I was able to quickly switch from Mapillary to Google.

Image by Google Earth

The above marked buildings seemed to match the buildings from the video below:

I like it when I have certainty. Unfortunately, the images posted on Mapillary were insufficient to get me close enough, so I decided to look at the added photos by users on Google Maps and Google Earth. To my delight, I found the following photo that gave me exactly what I wanted.

Image by Google Maps

Israel — Palestine

Now we come to one of my spots of interest. This is simultaneously one of the longest conflicts in existence and one of the most complicated places to perform geolocation. The quality of satellite imagery is abysmally poor and outdated, mainly as a result of a law from the United States called the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment (Public Law 104–201, Section 1064, part of the Military Defense National Defense Authorization Act for 1997) that ensured it remained that way. Incidentally, it is no longer in force, but we are still dealing with degraded quality.

Israel is a state where human rights organizations such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have concluded that apartheid policies are being carried out against Palestinians. Actions by the Israeli state treat Palestinians as second-class citizens and inflict human rights violations upon them.

Additionally, militant groups are active in the West Bank, so geolocation requires a dynamic approach which is not only focused on the Israeli forces but also considers movements of militants.

Soldiers shoot Mustafa al-Hasis in Hebron, West Bank

This incident was shared by the Israeli NGO B’Tselem on September 8th, 2022 on Twitter. In their thread they also shared the following article:

I highlighted the phrase “Bab a-Zawiya Checkpoint” first to research and quickly came upon a website called Hebron Apartheid. This is a project of Youth Against Settlements (YAG), an NGO whose aims are non-violent, grassroots resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. This group maps all cases of apartheid that exist within the occupied Palestinian territory. This made it easier to find the checkpoint, but not necessarily to verify the video footage.

Website and associated imagery by Hebron Apartheid. https://www.hebronapartheid.org/

With this information (including an illustration of the Bab a-Zawiya Checkpoint), I started looking for more images of the checkpoint in the Hebron area nearby. One website that has a lot of images available (with watermarks, but enough to give you an impression) is Alamy. Additionally, B’Tselem’s website and social media accounts have many images and videos.

Image by B’Tselem. https://www.btselem.org/hebron/20161201_hebron_restrictions

This alone could confirm that Mustafa al-Hasis was indeed brought to the Bab a-Zawiya Checkpoint, but we can also try to verify the footage and see if the route described by B’Tselem is the same as our analysis.

The article further mentions that al-Hasis explains what occurred: “Friends helped me go about 200 meters toward Wadi a-Tufah Street, but we were surprised by soldiers who came out of an ambush.”

Google Maps location search does not work as well in occupied Palestine as it does in the West, which I will explore further in a future article. As a result of this, to geolocate in Palestine you must first find other maps with more information. Waze.com showed a placemark on Wadi Al Tufah Street, Hebron — الْخَلِيل‎, West Bank. However, I needed coordinates that would work well enough on Google Maps to allow me to transfer over to Mapillary. When copying the name of the street, including the Arabic text, I eventually came on VYMaps to get what I wanted.

I used the coordinates in Google Maps and changed sites (using OpenSwitchMaps) to Mapillary. Then I came across the following signs that were identical to those in the video.

Image by Mapillary

Moving further, I could see the checkpoint out of the the corner of my eye and matched that with what happened in the video (including the photo by B’Tselem as extra footage).

Image by Mapillary

I also discovered that the route taken by the soldiers who picked him up and brought him to the checkpoint is less than one minute by foot.

Image by Google Maps

The geolocation of the checkpoint:

Image by sattelites.pro

Protests in Nablus after arrests of two Hamas militants by the Palestinian Authority

There is much division in the Palestinian territories, particularly because there are groups that disagree with Palestinian President Abbas’ approach to the people of Palestine. They disagree with making concessions to the Israeli state and, as a result, are forming their own militias or political parties. One of the most well-known is Hamas, but there are also Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Saraya Al-Quds, and recently Lion’s Den.

On September 20, 2022 a protest took place after two Hamas militants were apparently arrested. The protest arose because members of groups allied with Hamas suspect the Palestinian Authority of colluding with Israel to arrest the militants.

Video is archived here

As I watched this video to see where these militants were located, the following things caught my eye: a monument or place that clearly had an illustration with #LoveNablus on it at 0:27 seconds into the video, and at 0:25 seconds where it looks like there is fighting or things are on fire.

When looking for “I love Nablus” on Google Image Search, I discovered the following Wikimedia Commons page with a picture of the exact same installation and a description that said: “I love Nablus installation near the city hall, in downtown Nablus”:

I started using operators in my Google search, which makes it easier for you to refine your results, and typed in the following: site:vymaps.com “nablus city hall”. A list of all of the operators that you can use is available here. Given that I’ve experienced success in finding areas faster in Palestine with VYMaps, I thought I would use that site as the one to search.

The link above brought me to the following page:

Website by vymaps.com

I used those coordinates to move on Mapillary and Google Maps to look around that area. The humorous part of this search was that at the same time as I found this, I stumbled upon a totally different video recording shared by Moshe Schwartz, journalist for Yeshiva World News, which covered protests in Nablus, West Bank, Palestine located here.

Image by Google Maps
Image by Google Maps

After taking a break from my original goal, I decided to look further into the city to see if I could get to the location where the militants were in the video.

Image by Mapillary

Grabbing the video footage, I made notes and saw that I had a match on the Al-Hayah Pharmacy, the building nearby with a unique logo, another building further away, and of course, the #LoveNablus installation.

Image by Mapillary

This confirmed to me that the geolocation was here at Omar Al-Mukthar Street:

Image by Google Maps

Mapping incidents and events

If there is one thing that has stayed with me in the work I do, it is that often in the drive to find answers I forget what is important: creating an archive. Previously, I always used Twitter along with spreadsheets to keep track of it all, but those methods run the risk of the tweet being deleted, losing access to your account, etc.

In order to find out who is responsible for war crimes or human rights violations, you have to make sure that — and this is a point worth repeating — that everything is well-documented and clear.

While I was working on this, I met Noah Schechter, a student at Stanford University. Noah asked me what I was up against while doing a geolocation, and told me that he was working on a project called Atlos with Miles McCain, which could help open-source researchers handle archiving.

Courtesy by Atlos

In the image above, I have a complete list of all the incidents where I have performed geolocation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You can see where everything took place and with a simple click you can see the description of the incident.

Website by Atlos

When documenting these types of events, gather as much information as possible so that in addition to geolocation, there is more information that could eventually be used by human rights organizations or the International Criminal Court.

I asked Noah some questions to supplement my article and introduce you to Atlos and what my contribution to it has been.

[Editor’s note: Please note the responses are not edited.]

Why was Atlos created?

“Anyone can post visual evidence of a war crime online. The open source investigative community analyzing this media has done incredible work to catalog eyewitness photos and videos. But researchers’ efforts are fragmented across Twitter, Discord, Spreadsheets, and maps, because they lack the infrastructure to share information effectively. We (Miles McCain and I) built Atlos to enable investigators to collaborate at scale.”

How do you think Atlos can benefit the OSINT community?

“We envision Atlos as a Wikipedia-like commons for geolocated, catalogued media. Open source researchers are building a historical record of unprecedented granularity, and Atlos can be the home for their effort. Atlos facilitates collaboration on individual geolocations, large-scale information sharing, incident investigations, and analysis of trends in conflicts.”

How has Chris Osieck and his contributions helped you see how Atlos can be used?

“As one of Atlos’s first and most prolific researchers, Chris has helped shape the platform. He’s created a significant portion of the incidents in the Atlos catalog. He’s also set the standard for supplying geolocation evidence and even helped us fine-tune the structured data that describes each incident.”

Can’t wait to use Atlos like I am? Sign up at atlos.org/waitlist because they are planning to make Atlos open to the larger OSINT community very soon.

English edits by Sarah Stoecklin

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Chris Osieck

Open source researcher. Contributions: Bellingcat, De Volkskrant, The Washington Post, Al-Haq’s Forensic Architecture Unit, Al Jazeera, CNN, De Groene.