Reconstruction of a Lost Section of the Babyn Yar Relief
Digital terrain model of the ravine's destroyed pre-war landform, reconstructed from a georeferenced 1924 topographic survey. Commissioned by Pixelated Realities, 2018.
A digital terrain reconstruction of the destroyed part of Babyn Yar — the ravine in Kyiv where Nazi forces carried out mass killings during the Second World War, and whose original relief was later levelled and built over during the Soviet period.
The project covers the area of the memorial complex bounded by Olena Teliha, Dehtiarivska, Yurii Illienko and Oranzhereina streets. The main challenge was the absence of the historical landform itself: the reconstruction relied on a fragment of a 1924 topographic survey found in open sources. The sheet was georeferenced, the contour lines vectorized, and a digital terrain model of the pre-war relief generated through interpolation.
Commissioned by Pixelated Realities as part of their work on documenting and reconstructing the lost topography of Babyn Yar.
Current satellite view (Bing)
Topographic survey, 1924 — source raster
Vectorized contour lines
Elevation points over current satellite imagery
Hillshade render (Blender)
Reconstructed digital terrain model (QGIS)
Hypsometric colouring of the reconstructed DEM
Historical contours of 1924 over the modern satellite image