Project on Crowdsourced Imagery Analysis

Profile narrative

The organisation operates as a nonprofit project known as the Project on Crowdsourced Imagery Analysis, headquartered in the United States. Its primary activity is collecting and analysing satellite imagery through a crowdsourced model to monitor nuclear test sites and related facilities around the world. Volunteers and analysts contribute observations and interpretations that are aggregated into a shared geospatial database. This database stores imagery of sensitive locations such as nuclear test bases in countries including North Korea, Russia, Iran, and Myanmar. The service is intended for researchers, policymakers, and non‑governmental organisations interested in nuclear non‑proliferation and verification. By providing open access to analysed imagery, the project supports transparency and independent verification of nuclear activities. The project’s scope is global, covering any satellite‑derived data that can be relevant to nuclear test monitoring. No explicit market or revenue model is described in the available sources, reflecting its nonprofit status. The organisation relies on voluntary contributions and external funding to maintain its infrastructure. Its core product is the crowdsourced analysis platform and the associated geospatial repository.

A distinguishing attribute of the project is its reliance on crowdsourcing to harness distributed expertise for analysing high‑resolution satellite data. This approach enables rapid processing of large volumes of imagery that would be difficult for a small central team to handle alone. The project’s focus on nuclear test sites positions it within the niche of open‑source intelligence (OSINT) and verification communities. Unlike commercial satellite imagery providers, it does not sell data but instead offers analysed insights freely to the public. The organisation’s structural notes indicate it is an independent nonprofit entity; no parent company or subsidiary relationships are mentioned in the source material. Its headquarters in the United States places it under U.S. jurisdiction, though its user base and contributed data are international. The project’s resilience was tested on 7 September 2016 when a distributed denial‑of‑service attack temporarily disabled its geospatial database. The attack disrupted access to satellite images on the website but resulted in no data loss, and officials confirmed the incident was an external cyber‑action. The timing of the DDoS event, occurring shortly before a noted nuclear test at a monitored site, highlighted the project’s visibility and potential sensitivity. Despite the interruption, the project resumed normal operations after the servers were restored, demonstrating the importance of its infrastructure for ongoing nuclear monitoring efforts.

Incidents

1 incident linked to this organisation.