Turning Gaza to Rubble

This week the Gaza health ministry reported that 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel started attacking the territory in October. Over a third of those killed have been children. Much of Gaza itself has also been turned to rubble.

According to Bloomberg Israeli air strikes on Gaza have created 42 million tonnes of debris in the Strip. That is "enough rubble to fill a line of dump trucks stretching from New York to Singapore." The extent and the massive scale of the damage caused to Gaza is superbly illustrated in How Will Gaza be Rebuilt using a prism map, in which 3D towers are used to visualize the level of debris across the Strip.

One disadvantage of using prism maps is that taller prisms can obscure smaller ones, making it challenging to compare values in certain areas. This is mostly overcome in the Bloomberg article by rotating and tilting the map as different areas are covered in the article. The map also uses callout lines (to provide guidance as to the number of tonnes of debris represented by a prism's height) and place-name labels (for geographical accuracy).

The depiction of Gaza's debris using a prism map is a highly effective way to convey the devastation inflicted on the strip by Israel and to illustrate the immense effort that will be required to clear the debris before the territory can be made habitable again.