Bellingcat’s story was produced as part of a consortium with the following publishing partners: Forbidden Stories, Le Monde, Die Zeit, Der Standard, Paper Trail Media, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism and RFI.
Gathering aerial footage of Gaza is a dangerous task. In this investigation, Bellingcat, along with our publishing partners, identified several cases where drone journalists were killed or injured shortly after capturing aerial images.
In line with Bellingcat’s core value of transparency and openness this article includes as much detail as possible about how we verified the attacks, so our readers and viewers can check and replicate our work.
To take the investigation further, alongside satellite analysis, we decided to use recently captured drone footage (organised for capture by our partners Forbidden Stories) of Jabalia Refugee Camp and Al-Shati Refugee Camp and place that into a 3D photogrammetry model, giving our readers the ability to step into a snapshot of the two sites. Al-Shati was chosen as it was the site of one of the IDF airstrikes on a drone journalist who our partners interviewed.
The 3D models were created from the drone photos in four steps. First, corresponding features were detected and matched between images. Then, using the corresponding features, camera positions were triangulated using the camera parameters (ie. focal length, pixel size, lens distortion) and repeatedly adjusted to increase the accuracy of the reconstructed camera positions through bundle block adjustment. Next, depth maps were created for each image using dense stereo matching, which compares images from similar viewpoints to find the small differences between them caused by parallax. These depth maps were then used to create a 3D mesh that serves as an accurate recreation of Gaza. Finally, a texture was created by projecting the original drone photos onto the mesh in a way that seamlessly blends them, giving the final result of a photorealistic and dimensionally accurate 3D model.
Areas within the models are labelled to show recent strike spots and footage from the ground, helping users locate their surroundings amongst the rubble. We believe this is the first 3D model of both Al-Shati and Jabalia during the current conflict.
