We're happy to be back in the Microsoft Reactor with an evening dedicated to conflict data and open-source journalism. Come listen to our great speakers sharing their experience working with data about airstrikes, use of chemical weapons and more.
The doors will open at 6:45 pm with the first talk starting around 7:15 pm.
Nick is a senior open source investigator for Bellingcat. He was previously a British Army officer, after which he transitioned into cyber threat intelligence before joining Bellingcat. His work has focused on the use of armed commercial drones, chemical weapons use in Syria, and the systematic use of open sources to investigate airstrikes in Yemen.
Bellingcat is a Netherlands-based organisation which uses open-source information to investigate events around the world. Their sources of information include traditional news media, mapping and satellite imagery applications, social media, information dumps and virtually anything we can leverage effectively. They aim to verify the information we use, which has become an intrinsic part of the investigative process, often revealing aspects of stories we would not otherwise have found. This talk will examine this process using real-world case studies.
London based NGO Airwars tracks civilian harm at scale, in half a dozen major conflicts. Since 2018, they've been in an ongoing collaboration with the Glasgow based agency Rectangle, whose first task was to redesign a website already featuring tens of thousands of civilian deaths. The challenge? How to present data at scale - while ensuring the project remained both accessible and at a human level. The talk will cover the process of both organising and updating volumes of data reaching back to 2002, and Rectangle's ongoing work on the development of tools, archives, and visualizations for Airwars.
Our meetup is looking for a new sponsor to help cover the cost of our events. If you have a suggestion for potential supporters, please reach out to info@visualisingdata.london.
See you all in February.