Sahat Al-Bina' — Light Over Syria

Select a city

Marker size reflects how much a neighborhood's light has changed over the last year. Click a marker to add it to the comparison chart below.

Recovery Index: each neighborhood's percentile rank in light recovery (recent brightness vs. its darkest wartime point) against all 414 tracked neighborhoods nationwide. 100 = most recovered relative to peers, 0 = least. Click any row to add it to the comparison chart below.

Ask a question in plain language — e.g. "which neighborhoods in Homs are recovering fastest" or "where is population returning faster than services." The answer is generated by an AI model reasoning over this platform's own data, and can make mistakes — always check the underlying numbers yourself before relying on it.

Select up to 5 neighborhoods above to compare their light trends.

Population, by neighborhood

2015–2024 (solid) are modeled estimates grounded in census data; 2025–2030 (hatched) are demographic projections and may not reflect the post-2024 return migration visible in the light data above.

Mapped essential services

Counts reflect what's been mapped on OpenStreetMap as of mid-2026, not necessarily what exists — coverage is denser for schools than for hospitals, clinics, or markets, and some neighborhoods may have unmapped services.

Note: 2010–2013 (dashed) uses an older, coarser sensor (DMSP-OLS) and 2014 onward (solid) uses VIIRS — the two are not on the same brightness scale, shown together only to indicate the shape of the pre-war baseline. Syria's national grid has operated at roughly 2–4 hours of daily supply for most of this period, so brightness reflects grid rationing and generator/solar access as much as local rebuilding. Full methodology & limitations →