Satellite Imagery Collector

Overview

Monitors 38 military sites across Russia, Belarus, and Kaliningrad using free satellite imagery from the Copernicus programme via Google Earth Engine.

Schedule

Depends on satellite revisit cycle (~5 days per site). Checked daily via Dagu.

Data sources

• Sentinel-2 SR Harmonized — 10m optical imagery (RGB, spectral indices)
• Sentinel-1 GRD — SAR radar imagery (works through cloud cover)
• Google Cloud Storage — thumbnails stored in gs://estwarden-satellite/

Processing

1. Query Google Earth Engine for latest imagery covering each site’s bounding box
2. Generate RGB thumbnails for visual comparison
3. Compute spectral indices: BSI (bare soil), NDBI (built-up), fuel percentage, metal proxy
4. For SAR: compute mean backscatter change vs 30-day baseline
5. Run vision LLM (Gemini) analysis on each image for aircraft count, vehicle concentration, runway status
6. Submit to ingest API

Sites monitored

38 military installations including air bases, naval facilities, missile sites, and ground force bases across the Western Military District, Kaliningrad exclave, and Belarus.

Methodology

See Satellite Imagery Analysis for how this data is analyzed.

Status

Requires Google Cloud Platform credentials for Earth Engine access.