Seeking Ground Truth in Gaza.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Lelie The World Court rules tomorrow on whether to grant emergency measures to stop the war in Gaza,

where South Africa accuses Israel of carrying out a state-led genocide.

Israel says it's targeting Hamas militants, not Palestinian civilians, in response to the deadly Hamas

attack on October 7th, but more than 25,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes since then.

And nearly half the buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed,

according to Kory Schur of Cuny,

and Oregon states Jaimen Vandenhook who've been mapping the destruction

with satellite radar technology.

What satellite radar does is illuminates

a region with microwaves, radar waves, similar to a camera flash, but from 700 kilometers in

altitude and it does this from an angle. So because we know the characteristics

of the outgoing wavelengths,

when the satellite retrieved the echoes of those microwaves back at its sensor,

we get an idea of the 3D structure and arrangement of a region, which is much different than looking at the color of a region.

So coming at this from an angle, it sounds like gives you a much more textured understanding of what is happening in the way of destruction.

Texture is a great way to phrase it. Yeah, I often use the phrase and

colleagues in this specific research community talk about the

structure and arrangement of a region. It's randomness. But yeah, we are more sensitive to

the texture of a region, a satellite radar.

You started working on mapping Gaza well before the current conflict.

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