Geo-Forensics: Satellite Imagery Analysis for Policy Support

Policy decisions that hinge on what's physically happening on the ground - illegal construction, land encroachment, resource extraction - are only as good as the evidence behind them. We worked on geo-forensics analysis that integrates satellite imagery with GIS data to build a verifiable, time-stamped record of ground conditions, giving policymakers spatial evidence they could check directly rather than relying on secondhand field reports.

The work involved pulling historical and current satellite imagery for areas under review, aligning it against cadastral and administrative GIS layers, and constructing a timeline showing exactly when specific changes occurred. Overlaying imagery against official boundary and zoning data made it possible to answer concrete questions - was this structure present before the relevant regulation took effect, did this land-use change fall inside a protected boundary - with dated visual evidence rather than assertion.

This kind of analysis only works if the evidence is defensible, so a consistent, repeatable methodology mattered as much as the specific findings: the same approach needed to hold up whether it was applied to one parcel or a province-wide review.

We built a repeatable geo-forensics methodology: pulling historical and current satellite imagery for the area under review, aligning it against cadastral and administrative GIS layers, and constructing a dated timeline of change that could be checked against specific regulatory or boundary questions.