Sondre Ulvund Solstad, PhD

The war in Ukraine is the most documented in history, but given the impossibility of stationing reporters in every neighbourhood, the material coming out of the country paints only a partial picture. Sondre Ulvund Solstad attempted to fill this gap with his pioneering ‘war tracker’, which, using data from satellites originally deployed to track forest fires, allowed him to automatically map and report on the Ukraine war in real time. Viewed by thousands of people daily, the tracker provides stark evidence that “rather than being limited to a few big offensives and grinding battles, the war has left a brutal mark on large swathes of Ukraine,” says Solstad, and it continues to inform his articles.

He has also used the war tracker to cover the civil war in Sudan, to examine air bases in China, and to monitor rockets fired between Israel and Gaza. 

Solstad’s work has had a crucial material impact: refugee groups and NGOs in Sudan and Ukraine have used his maps to more accurately target their humanitarian response to the conflicts. In telling stories that are impossible through conventional journalism, this “compelling entry” is “a 21st century way to report on a 21st century conflict,” concluded the judges.