SICSS Istanbul 2023 | Satellite Imagery and Remote Sensing for OSINT (Ollie Ballinger)

How can publicly available satellite imagery reveal hidden economic activity, sanctions evasion, and even potential war crimes? In this lecture, Dr. Ollie Ballinger (University College London) demonstrates how computational social scientists can combine remote sensing, satellite imagery, geospatial analysis, and open-source intelligence (OSINT) to investigate complex political and humanitarian questions. Using the case of grain exports from occupied Ukrainian territories, the lecture shows how researchers can move from investigative reports to scalable computational methods capable of monitoring clandestine activity over time. The session introduces the principles of maritime Automatic Identification System (AIS) data before examining its limitations when ships deliberately disable their transponders to avoid detection. To overcome this problem, participants learn how Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite imagery can identify vessels regardless of weather conditions, cloud cover, or time of day. Through live coding in Python and Google Earth Engine, the lecture builds a complete workflow for detecting ships from Sentinel-1 radar imagery using thresholding, blob detection, spatial filtering, and geospatial validation. Beyond the technical implementation, the lecture emphasizes a broader research philosophy: computational social science is not simply about applying advanced algorithms, but about creatively combining multiple imperfect data sources to answer important societal questions. Participants learn how remote sensing, geospatial computation, and open-source intelligence can be integrated into transparent, reproducible research pipelines for studying conflict, sanctions, humanitarian crises, environmental change, and global political behavior. Topics covered Computational social science Remote sensing Satellite imagery Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Sentinel-1 satellite data Google Earth Engine Open-source intelligence (OSINT) Automatic Identification System (AIS) Maritime vessel tracking Ship detection from satellite imagery Blob detection Thresholding and image segmentation Geospatial analysis Conflict monitoring Sanctions evasion Maritime security War crimes documentation Spatial data science Python for geospatial analysis Open-source geospatial workflows This lecture was delivered during the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science (SICSS Istanbul 2023) for graduate students and researchers interested in computational social science, geospatial analytics, remote sensing, conflict research, humanitarian monitoring, and the use of satellite data and open-source intelligence to study complex social and political phenomena at scale.