Can Satellite Data Drive Syria’s Eventual Reconstruction?

One of the world's leading financial institutions is already banking on it

By Shane Dixon Kavanaugh

As Syria’s civil war rages with no end in sight, a prominent international organization has already begun to plot a pathway for the country’s eventual reconstruction—by using remote data-collecting technology to track the conflict in real time.


The Wold Bank said that it has drawn on satellite images of six cities ravaged by the fighting—Aleppo, Dar’a, Hama, Homs, Idlib, and Latakia—to assess and analyze the damage wrought on those urban centers. Though captured from afar, satellite data can provide an evolving snapshot of the conflict’s devastation and what areas suffer the most.
The initial estimates captured by the bank are bleak. Loss of public infrastructure among the six cities alone is at least $6 billion, with housing comprising two-thirds of the total. More than 58 percent of all damage surveyed by the World Bank has occurred in Aleppo, once Syria’s financial capital and one of the country’s most populous cities.