How would it look if London was in the middle of the Syrian conflict
By Michal Skýpala
2017 was an eventful year. The global refugee crisis continued to be a major story last year. With millions of people displaced from Syria, only 0.24 per cent of the UK population are refugees, asylum seekers or stateless people. That counts 168,978 people, around the population of Rochdale in greater Manchester.
Urgency of Syrian refugee crisis might seem to many Britons a distant problem. Data Visualizer Hans Hack therefore in March 2017 come up with an idea to showcase the Syrian war tragedy on familiar ground. His 'Aleppo in London' overlays the damage to the city during Syria’s civil war on map of the UK capital, shoving staggering insight into the scope of the destruction that forced many Syrians from their homes.
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Project takes the data from The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR)'s map which "illustrates the percentage of buildings damaged in the city of Aleppo" based on satellite imagery analysis.
The map shows the levels of destruction in each of Aleppo’s districts and Hack reprojected it onto figure-ground maps of London. As a geographical reference point, the historical center of Aleppo (The Citadel of Aleppo) has been superimposed on that of London (The Tower of London).
The destruction is then shown in randomly selected buildings marked in red. 'The overall aim of the exercise is to help viewers imagine the extent of destruction that might have been visited upon the UK capital had these cities stood at the centre of Syria’s current conflict,' explains Hack.
