Kind: captions
Language: en
geolocating images isn't always as easy
as finding something like the eiffel
tower in the background of a photo or
the statue of liberty
but where it really matters is where
there's no significant landmarks except
maybe something like a mountain
but mountains cliffs ranges and canyons
are all unique creatures and they come
in all shapes and sizes from curvy
mountains big mountains
sharp ones and steep ones
so when we're looking at videos and
photos trying to figure out where they
were taken
you can see that mountains in the
background can be super useful
so let's have a look at a few tools that
can help you get a little bit better at
finding the location of a photo or a
video that features one of nature's
perfect landmarks
mountains
[Music]
hi everyone and welcome back to this
series on how to do open source
investigations from home i'm ben and
this is part 13 so let's get started
[Music]
i want to start this session off by
taking you through the most useful tool
any good open source investigator should
learn
and that's google earth
and google earth provides a variety of
features that are useful for us
but one compelling one for this session
is the ability to view the earth's
surface
in 3d that's right in full 3d view just
like what we're seeing here with these
mountains in comparison to what a normal
satellite image would show as just
seeing them as flat
with google earth we can view things in
3d such as houses trees buildings
and even bridges in 3d as well
but what we can also view is nature in
3d
for example let's take a look at this
view of the el capitan in california
we can see the details of it we can see
how perfect some of these ridge lines
are along here we can even have a peek
through some of these ridge lines
and look just at how detailed they are
if you've been watching some of my
previous videos i've created on
geolocation you might have seen me use
some mountains before
for example
in the video finding modi
where we used mountain ranges to match
up angles of where photos were taken in
the valley you might also have seen some
work from myself and a number of other
open source investigators for a bbc
africa eye investigation
where the geolocation of mountain ranges
were part of the verification used to
identify the location of a chilling
execution in cameroon
we can use the same thing here by
showing for example the intense flooding
in sudan's kasala region
so if we have a look at casala just
having a look at the normal satellite
imagery we can see that there must be
some mountains there but without that 3d
view on we don't get much at all let's
have a look at that view if we pop on
the terrain function here in google
earth
and if we have a look at this video of
the flooding in casala from 2019 where
there was large flooding in sudan we can
see signs of what appears to be steep
mountains in the background this helps
us geolocate that footage so that
perhaps we can narrow down this footage
and see
if we can identify exactly where that
video might have been filmed from let's
take a look at that place on google
earth and see if we can find where those
mountains might be and where some of
these features and shapes that we see in
this video might be as well
sometimes however mountain ranges are
not as well textured as we'd like
so while you might see
sharp jagged rocks like we have in the
el capitan here
let's compare this against say
this jagged mountain range in yemen
notice how the shaping on this mountain
here if we have a look at it from above
we can see that it's even causing
shadows because it's so jagged and tall
that it's causing these large shadows
coming out of here
and yet if we view it on the side
it looks completely flat and completely
domed and rounded as well let's match
these up together
alongside what we can see of el capitan
and you can see just the difference in
some areas of the attention to detail
on some of these mountain ranges and
ridgelines this texturing problem makes
it difficult when we're trying to find
specific ranges that fit for certain
geolocations a really good case on this
was one that i worked on in 2021
on this footage that we see of a
wreckage site in ethiopia we can see the
mountain range and i've geolocated that
footage but it doesn't seem to perfectly
match with what we've got in the video
as well to fix this we can use this
really simple tool called peak visor
which is allows us to identify mountain
ranges
really precisely much more precisely
than what we get sometimes on for
example google earth
if we have a look at this location of
where the footage was filmed from we can
see that these mountains are much more
defined than what we have on google
earth and you can see that those
features are very much different to what
we have on the features that we can see
on google earth here notice the
difference on this bridge line
along here
in comparison to the ridgeline
in this one
over on this side notice the difference
between these two ridge lines that we're
looking at
and how we can see
different bends in the mountains
and different bumps and things like that
it makes a very much a different image
both of them are similar to what we have
in the footage but the one from peak
visor is much more of a stronger match
isn't it this means peak visor gives us
more accurate view of the mountains in
the background of the footage
and when we match that up it really
shows that proof of geolocation
so it just goes to show that when you're
in doubt searching for that extra level
of verification always helps i hope you
enjoyed this session on geolocation
using mountain ranges if you did please
do leave a comment give it a like and
share with a friend or colleague that
might find it useful as well and i'll
see you in the next session but until
then keep searching
[Music]
you