OSINT in crises: how real-time intelligence saves lives

Explore how OSINT is used during crises — whether fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions or geopolitical tensions — and list the major tools employed in this work

In today’s interconnected world, any crisis occurring anywhere can quickly be shared online. With the widespread prevalence of social media platforms globally, the rapid proliferation of this information allows open-source intelligence (OSINT) gatherers to utilize vast available data. One of the most critical applications of OSINT is crisis management.

How does OSINT bolster crisis management?

OSINT plays a vital role in crisis management by providing real-time information from publicly available sources to aid emergency response, situational awareness and decision-making. The ability to acquire data from social media platforms in addition to news outlets and other online sources makes OSINT an indispensable tool for aiding in crisis management. Here are the top key benefits of using OSINT in the crisis management field:

• Real-time situational awareness — OSINT helps monitor emerging events on a global scale, including natural disasters and military conflicts through social media, eyewitness reports and geospatial data.
• Verification of information — The large volume of digital data available online and the ease of broadcasting information online are key disadvantages of OSINT. Anyone can post anything online, and with the advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, fabricated content such as deepfake videos and images has become more widely spread. OSINT helps in this endeavor to reveal the authenticity of the collected data using various tools and online services. This helps reduce misinformation in collected data and increases response time.
• Identify affected areas — Emergency teams use OSINT, such as geospatial images, to identify affected areas with natural disasters to organize their relief and aid distribution. Here are some commercial and free providers for satellite images: EXPLORE, Google Earth and Sentinel Hub.  
• Early warning — Some applications, such as earthquake notification applications (e.g., My Earthquake Alerts, Myshake and Earthquake Notification Service (ENS)), provide early warning of earthquakes through real-time alerts.
• Human rights violations — OSINT allows legal teams to collect documents and evidence for accountability purposes (e.g., war crimes and disaster negligence matters) 

How to use OSINT in crisis management

There are different use cases for leveraging OSINT in crisis management. Here are the most notable ones:

Natural disasters

OSINT can play a role in natural disasters by providing real-time updates to help coordinate relief efforts and increase response time to save lives and reduce damage. OSINT can help in the following scenarios:

• Real-time monitoring — By monitoring social media posts, such as Facebook, X and TikTok, OSINT gatherers can get important real-time information on disaster conditions, whether it is an earthquake, flood or wildfire.

We already created detailed guides on how to search within Facebook, X and TikTok.

• News aggregation — Collecting information from various news outlets to see how an event is developing and to get comprehensive information about the disaster as it unfolds. We can use the following news portals: Google News, CNN , APnews and BBC.
• Damage assessment — OSINT helps in determining the damage assessment of a specific geographical area. For example, we can use satellite images and photos collected from drones and posted online to assess damage in a particular area. This helps respondent teams to prioritize their efforts accordingly.
• Crowdsourced data from different sources — People on the ground may post different videos and images of the impacted areas. OSINT gatherers can search and collect this content to understand what is happening right now and the extent of damage in the affected areas. Some tools to help you find images and videos of geographical locations:
  • Google reverse image search
  • Bing visual search
  • Picarta: Finds where a photo was taken worldwide using AI technology  
• Resources coordination — By monitoring social media posts, OSINT gatherers can determine the areas that need help most to direct aid effectively. For example, in the event of a flood, social media posts may pinpoint people stuck in some places and needing help to evacuate.
• Logistics tracking — After sending the aid materials, OSINT can help in monitoring logistics and personnel transportation, whether they are transported via plane, sea or using vehicles. Here are some services for tracking ships, railways and planes:
  • Vesselfinder: Tracking ships worldwide
  • Flightradar24: Tracking airplanes worldwide
  • Amtrak: Track trains across the US
• Misinformation management — Identifying misinformation campaigns that try to bring panic to the population and alerting people via social media platforms about the falseness of such information.

Health crisis

OSINT provides critical intelligence during health emergencies by using publicly available information to support response efforts, track disease spread and combat misinformation. The WHO's Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources (EIOS) Initiative demonstrates this importance by using OSINT to create a unified all-hazards, one health approach to early detection, verification and assessment of public health threats.

OSINT can prove very beneficial during health emergencies:

• Early outbreak detection — By monitoring social media posts, we can get early warning signs of emerging health threats before having an official confirmation by authorities. This helps in increasing response time and saving lives.
• Disease tracking — OSINT sources can be used effectively to track disease spread in a particular geographical region by monitoring social media posts and health bulletins published by the government and related bodies. There are many online services that can be leveraged for disease tracking. Here are the most prominent ones:
  • Healthmap: Collects health data from a large number of sources across the globe and displays them in an interactive map (see Figure 1).
  • World Health Organization (WHO): The WHO provides up-to-date information on disease outbreaks globally.
  • U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): Provides comprehensive data and tracking tools for various diseases.

Figure 1 - HealthMap

• Resource allocation — OSINT gatherers can monitor social media and news sources to identify areas with critical shortages of medical supplies, hospital capacity issues, or overwhelmed healthcare systems to direct resources effectively to them.  
• Public sentiment analysis — Analyzing social media posts can reveal important information about public sentiment towards health emergencies, such as resistance to taking vaccination or to staying at home during lockdown.
• Countering misinformation related to health care — Analyzing social media posts and information included in official health bulletins helps in determining disinformation campaigns that aim to spread false information about specific health issues, especially during pandemics, which enables rapid fact-checking responses.

Geopolitical conflicts

In conflict zones, OSINT can prove very valuable in the following areas:

• Real-time conflict monitoring — To get real-time information about conflict zones, OSINT gatherers can monitor social media posts, check news reports, and satellite imagery. These sources provide immediate information on battlefield conditions, troop movements and civilian displacement in active conflict zones. For example, geolocated videos from Ukraine aided in verifying missile strikes and tracking military convoy movements during the conflict. Here are some resources to help monitor events in conflict zones:
  • Liveuamap: Aggregate information from various sources regarding the Ukrainian war and display it in an interactive map.
  • Deepstatemap: Map of the war in Ukraine.
  • Syriancivilwarmap: Map of Syrian Civil War.
  • Marinevesseltraffic world war map: Provide different maps related to war across the world such as military air bases map, world air forces locations fields, NATO and Russia warships live map and world war live map (see Figure 2).

World war live map from marinevesseltraffic

• Military capability assessment — OSINT plays an important role in evaluating military capabilities within conflict areas. For example, in recent escalations between Iran and Israel, military experts were able to identify the type of rockets used from their flame color and debris analysis. OSINT gatherers can also analyze narratives across niche online platforms, such as Telegram channels, to gather more insights into equipment, force strength, and operational patterns purely from open sources.
• Misinformation detection — In warfare zones, political and military propaganda is commonplace. OSINT sources can be used to validate claims and ensure the accuracy of collected information. Cross-referencing multiple sources and reverse image searches helps verify the authenticity of combat footage and casualty reports.
• Early warning systems — OSINT can play the role of early warning systems in regions with political and military unrest. By analyzing economic indicators and social tensions, OSINT analysts can predict possible wars and humanitarian crises before they occur.

Cybersecurity

Crisis management is not limited to geopolitical tensions and natural disasters. For example, OSINT can be very helpful when analyzing major cyberattacks against critical infrastructure. By monitoring darknet discussion forums and gathering information about adversaries across the surface and darknet, OSINT can help reveal important information about adversaries engaged in such actions.

OSINT has become a critical component of modern crisis management, as it enables rapid response and informed decision-making across different emergency scenarios. From natural disasters to geopolitical conflicts, the ability to gather, verify and analyze publicly available information in real-time continues to save lives and reduce damage.

Gather intelligence quickly and securely

Are you taking your investigation into adversary territory? Maintaining anonymity, security and compliance is a major challenge and homespun solutions can drain resources from mission-critical work.

Silo is a digital investigations platform purpose-built to support, streamline and secure the most sensitive research. Many analysts from top federal agencies and enterprises rely on managed attribution to control your digital fingerprint and appear in-region to foreign websites. To learn more about how to protect your investigation and fast track collection, read more about Silo or start a free trial.