Andy Burke
BellingcatThe Bellingcat Search Grid tool allows you to overlay a simple grid on your research area, turning your geolocation search into manageable sections to work through. Created by Bellingcat community member @TomiMcCluskey and Bellingcat’s @galen https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/how-tos/2024/08/05/tracking-your-search-a-guide-to-the-grid-generator/?utm_source=mastodon
Open source investigations often require vast amounts of time analysing imagery, trying to find the exact location of an incident or object in satellite or geospatial data. Sometimes you can forget where you’ve already looked and analysis can become confusing and time consuming.
This tool aims to simplify that manual search. Giving you the opportunity to search square by square systematically. https://grid.bellingcat.com
Built in collaboration with our Discord volunteer community and the Project OWL community. It’s simple to use and requires no installation, coding, or understanding of complex GIS software.
Simply add your coordinates or drag the corners of the in-built map over your location in the tool. Confirm your grid size, which defaults to one sq km. And click download to produce a KML file, which you can then import into Google Earth, or your GIS tool of choice.
Launched earlier this month the tool is already being used by our Volunteer Community to plot possible incidents of civilian harm inside Ukraine. https://ukraine.bellingcat.com/
Still struggling with your geolocation? Our Open Street Map Search tool may also help ease the beginning stages of your search. https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/how-tos/2023/05/08/finding-geolocation-leads-with-bellingcats-openstreetmap-search-tool/
Our shadow finder tool might also help! Narrowing your search area using the length of shadows in your image. Watch @georainbolt use that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQIjDPFgdJA
how to find a location using only the shadow
Want to help improve our open source tool developments? You can find all of our tools and contribute to our GitHub here: https://github.com/bellingcat
This tool was made in conjunction with our Discord community. Join our Discord server to pitch new tool ideas and collaboratively work together developing useful research tools. https://discord.gg/bellingcat
Bellingcat is a non-profit and the ability to carry out our work is dependent on the kind support of individual donors. If you would like to support our work, you can do so here. https://www.bellingcat.com/donate/
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