Geolocation challenge: How I found a car in CAR
On 23 March 2021 CPC rebels in the Central African Republic intercepted a humanitarian convoy heading towards Bakouma, Mbomou and subsequently seized seven vehicles belonging to UNOCHA. Days later they published on social media photo of one of the seized vehicles.
Notable features include some armored vests and AK assault rifle on the vehicle. Rebels claimed that these were weapons destined for soldiers however it’s impossible to verify that based on that image. It is also impossible to determine purpose of the vehicle due to lack of indeitfable markings in the two shots. Based on the shape and symbols we can however conclude that the vehicle is Toyota Land Cruiser 76. On 7 July 2024 I set out on a challenge of geolocating the photo. Initially it seemed impossible, the photos are low quality and contain any notable buildings that could allow identification. I began to look at buildings visible behind the car to try to reconstruct the yard it is standing on.
Let’s start with first photo:
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On the left side of the photo (1) is visible a building made out of metal sheets supported by wooden sticks with a gable roof paralell to the direction of the car. In front of the building (with some gap between them is a metal fence (2) separating the yeard from area with trees. On the right side of the image (3) we can see trees. I moved on to the second photo:
On the left side of the photo (1) we see a white building, the only one in the photo not made out of metal with orange roof, white walls and wooden fence around it. Its ridge goes perpendicular to the direction of the car. On the right side of the image (3) we can see another building with gable roof whose ridge goes paralell to the vehicle direction. Between them we can see a gap (2) which leads to a yardbehind which there is another structure. Based on this information I proceeded to build a model of the area where the potos were taken. Here is a rough sketch of what I came up with:
The next important part involved finding direction the car was facing relative to cardinal directions. Both photos contain a show which goes directly alongside the vehicle’s axis, bit behind it. I used a website shademap.app to simulate lightning in Bakouma, Central African Republic around 5 April:
The shhadows on that day were cast eastwards after noon and westwards before, indicating the the Toyota was standing on the East–West axis. Based on this I began looking for configuration of buildings which matched my criteria.
I looked around the city of Bakouma. Most of it consisted of sparesly placed buildings and few trees which upon further inspection didn’t fit the images. I focused on the area in the green circle. It is placed on the road leading in and out of Bakouma which made it very likely that upon robbing the convoy, rebels would take pictures here, heading north towards their headquarters. I found a few places where the configurations of the buildings at least partially matched what I was looking for (for hose curious – these are the purple circles). After a bit of searching I found one place that matched my model almost perfectly.
After rotating it a bit around in Google Earth I was able to determine the location of the vehicle to be 5.703159682, 22.7769134 as well as both point of views.
The car in the photo is facing eastwards, indicating the photo was taken in the early after noon. While the location itself didn’t reveal anything groundbreaking or surprising it definietly served as fun geolocating exercise, showing that even a photo that shows almost nothing can be found.
Hope you enjoyed!