‘New Great Wall’ of China, Ukraine on the Offensive, Spain’s Coast Under Threat, and the Scale of Gaza Destruction

Using satellite imagery analysis, The New York Times reports on how China is securing its borders by building a “new Great Wall” of civilian settlements along its western frontier. Meanwhile, according to The Washington Post, Vietnam is creating artificial islands in the contested South China Sea in order “to challenge rising Chinese assertiveness.” Elsewhere, Ukrainian forces have advanced into Russian territory, a bold shift in strategy that The Wall Street Journal unpacks in a deep dive. This edition of our Top 10 in Data Journalism, which considered stories between August 5 and 18, also highlights a Bloomberg analysis of the potential billion-dollar costs of rebuilding Gaza; an El Mundo mapping of coastal areas threatened by rising sea levels in Spain; and a Bellingcat timeline of the events that led to the resignation of Bangladesh’s prime minister.

‘New Great Wall’ of China

Image: Screenshot, The New York Times

According to an interactive special by The New York Times, Beijing is investing heavily in its land borders “to quietly solidify control in far-flung frontiers.” Through an analysis of satellite imagery and verification of historical images, state media, social media, and public records, reporters found that the country has built more than 50 new villages along its western borders in the past eight years, including 12 in areas claimed by other countries, and has added new homes to at least 100 other villages to house so-called “border guardians.”

The buildup, the Times said, appears to be a land-based equivalent to China’s attempt to exert control at sea with fishing militias and island-building in the disputed South China Sea. That, in turn, is the subject of a Washington Post special report that also uses satellite imagery to show how Vietnam has recently accelerated the construction of artificial islands in the same area, by dredging and filling in land, fortifying barriers, and building new military structures.

Ukraine Invades Russia

Image: Screenshot, The Wall Street Journal

Two-and-a-half years after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to march towards Kiev, Ukraine launched a bold offensive: on August 6, its army advanced into Russian territory along several main transportation corridors, capturing several cities in the Kursk region. The Wall Street Journal goes behind the scenes of the incursion, which is considered to be the first time that a foreign military force has occupied Russian soil since the Second World War. According to the report, the mission succeeded due to secrecy, the speed with which the troops advanced, and the use of electronic interference to scramble Russian signals.

The Last Minutes Of Flight 2283

Image: Screenshot, Estadão

Relatives of the victims, aviation experts, and the rest of Brazil are still trying to understand what happened to Flight 2283, which crashed with 62 people on board, leaving no survivors. The Voepass plane departed from the city of Cascavel, in the state of Paraná, bound for São Paulo’s Guarulhos Airport, the largest in the country but crashed en route on August 9. In this visual explainer, reporters at the newspaper Estadão explain how the aircraft model, an ATR-72, works and try to reconstruct the last minutes of the flight, based on the analysis of data from the flight tracking platform Flightradar24. The report also explains what ice buildup is, after experts said it was the main hypothesis for the crash, and profiles some of the victims.

42 Million Tons of Rubble in Gaza

Image: Screenshot, Bloomberg

With a new ceasefire between Israel and Hamas still under negotiation, the question arises: What will it take to rebuild Gaza? Since the conflict began last October, most of Gaza’s 2.2 million people have been displaced and more than 70% of the area’s homes, as well as schools, hospitals, and businesses have reportedly been damaged. In addition to the massive death toll — more than 40,000 killed, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry — Israeli strikes have left more than 42 million tons of debris, according to UN figures. In this visual special, Bloomberg uses a 3D model to show the scale of the destruction — which is enough rubble to fill a line of dump trucks from New York to Singapore. Although most of the debris comes from destroyed homes, the task of rebuilding — when the time comes — will be complicated by unexploded bombs, dangerous contaminants, and human remains beneath the rubble. It could cost up to US$700 million, Bloomberg reports, “and it’s not clear who is going to pay.”

Paris Olympics: Final Tally

Image: Le Monde

After 16 intense days of competition the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics — the favorite subject for data journalism teams around the world for the last few weeks — came to an end. But not before our final Olympic-themed selection for this column: Le Monde’s celebratory Olympic review, which presents a summary of the event in four graphs: the evolution of the medal ranking by country, the performance of each nation by discipline, a country-by-country comparison of the number of women’s and men’s medals won, and a recap of the Olympic records broken (spoiler alert: there were almost 40). For data journalists with withdrawal symptoms, the 2024 Paralympic Games, also in Paris, start August 28.

Risky Bets in South Africa

Image: The Outlier

In South Africa, the gambling industry generated 47.2 billion South African rand (around US$2.7 billion) last year, the highest figure on record. According to The Outlier, this record growth in recent years has been driven largely by online gambling, which accounted for more than half of revenue. Online gambling became popular during the COVID-19 pandemic when many casinos were closed. But even as venues have reopened, the share of revenue generated by casinos has sharply declined. Some possible reasons for this change in behavior include the ease of placing bets online — with just a few clicks on a computer or mobile device — and increased internet access. The total value of bets, however, is estimated to be significantly higher than the overall revenue, as winnings are often “recycled” into new bets. Another number has also increased: South Africans seeking treatment for gambling addiction.

Spain’s Coast Under Threat from Sea Level Rise

Image: Screenshot, El Mundo

It’s no secret that coastal areas and cities bordering the sea are under threat from rising sea levels caused by global warming. In this special report, El Mundo mapped out which beaches and points along the 8,000 kilometers (4,970 miles) of Spanish coastline are at risk of disappearing. According to the online newspaper, almost 200 coastal areas home to more than 300,000 people could suffer from sea flooding by 2030. The article also presents graphs showing the change in global sea level compared to 1900 and the main reasons for this phenomenon — rising global temperatures and shrinking Arctic sea ice surface — with projections based on five socioeconomic development scenarios.

How Much of Your Salary Goes to Rent?

Image: Screenshot, Ataltszo

The housing crisis and rising rental prices are disproportionately affecting major European cities and capitals, according to Hungarian research center Atlatszo. Using data from the 2024 Deloitte Property Index and Eurostat, the team calculated what proportion of the average salary of EU residents is spent on rent. According to the report, over the past 10 years rental expenses for European citizens have increased by an average of 17% — while in Hungary this increase was more than 86%. That country had the biggest increase in subletting prices, compared to the base year of 2015. These increases, however, have not been reflected in the average salary, which is very low compared to most of Europe, according to the outlet. Thus, a single person without children spends on average a third of their salary to live in Budapest. For comparison, it takes just 10% of the average salary to rent an apartment in Vienna.

Analyzing the Protests in Bangladesh

Image: Screenshot, Bellingcat

After 15 years in power, on August 5, 2024 Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country. Her dramatic downfall, however, is just one chapter in the country’s tumultuous last few months. Since late July, thousands of students have taken to the streets to demand an end to a new quota that reserved 30% of government jobs for relatives of veterans who fought in Bangladesh’s war of independence, making these positions even more competitive and inaccessible to the general population. More than 200 people, most of them students, were killed during protests and a curfew was imposed. New protests followed, bringing tens of thousands onto the streets of Dhaka demanding Hasina’s resignation. Shortly before the politician’s departure, a near-total shutdown of the internet was imposed. To understand how tensions escalated, Bellingcat traced a timeline of events by analyzing and geolocating videos and images from the final hours of Hasina’s rule.

Greek Summer Brings Fires

Image: Screenshot, Efimerida ton Syntakton

Greek summers have been marked by major forest fires for many years, and 2024 has been no exception. A massive conflagration on the outskirts of Athens on August 12 forced the evacuation of residents in more than 25 locations. According to an analysis of data carried out by the daily newspaper Efimerida ton Syntakton, the day after the incident, the situation was so serious that it threatened the National Observatory of Athens in Penteli, just outside of the capital, which monitors the fires. According to the report, the Greek government has, in theory, the largest budget in recent years for forest fire protection, and yet 30% of the Attica administrative region where Athens is located and where at least 40% of the country’s population lives has been destroyed by forest fires. The consequences of these disasters in the Athens region are particularly dire because the city has one of the lowest rates of green spaces per citizen in the world, worse even than cities located in deserts such as Las Vegas and Dubai.

BONUS: Books on Data Visualization

Image: Screenshot, Visual Cinnamon

This week GIJN published our latest installment of our Bookshelf — a roundup of recent investigative journalism books reviewed by our staff. But if you’re looking for books to read about the basic principles and best practices of data visualization and design, we’ve also got you covered. Award-winning data visualization designer Nadieh Bremer has compiled a list of in-depth reviews of 30 data visualization books.

Ana Beatriz Assam is GIJN’s Portuguese editor and a Brazilian journalist. She has worked as a freelance reporter for the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, mainly covering stories featuring data journalism. She also works for the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji) as an assistant coordinator of journalism courses.