Culture in the Crosshairs by Australian Broadcasting Corporation

We followed the efforts of volunteers and human rights workers to document the destruction of treasured Ukrainian buildings.

We took point cloud data (gigabytes worth of material and billions of individual points) captured on the ground in Ukraine using a LiDAR laser scanner and drone, and processed it down to a point where we could build a fly-through of the buildings using 3D javascript animation libraries.

Because of the size of the point clouds, we had to use innovative techniques that allowed the data to load in blocks that allowed the visualisations to work for audience members without fast internet connections or older mobile devices.

The resulting story and visualisation gave readers a close-up look at the damage inflicted on Ukraine's historic buildings and critical infrastructure.