OSINT Newsletter #29 — Geolocation Challenge

I’m keeping the momentum going by doing yet another geolocation challenge from Jake Crep’s OSINT Newsletter. I found this one to be pretty easy. Either that, or I’m getting much better at this! The Challenge Questions are: In which city was this image taken? What are the specific coordinates?

As usual, I like to analyse the image for something to focus on that will give me clues about the geographical region I’m looking at. The thing that catches my eye here are two elements on the sign on the left. I first read UBC and instantly thought “The University of British Columbia?” Examining the other three letters (VGH) and the surrounding buildings made me think, “Maybe it stands for Vancouver General Hospital?” Right underneath the English text on the sign, I could see a sentence in Mandarin. Knowing that Vancouver (the Canadian one) has a significant Mandarin-speaking population, it would make sense that there is signage in Mandarin to accommodate that demographic.

Before diving headfirst into Google Earth, I verified my hypothesis by searching “VGH UBC”. The first search result confirmed my initial assessment.

Matching logo on the hospital’s landing page

Looks the same to me!

Now that the location/facility is confirmed, I searched Vancouver General Hospital on Google Earth. I examined the source image again to select elements that could be viewed from a bird’s eye view, thereby helping to pinpoint the location. I decided it would be most helpful to look for a sidewalk, trees, a building with pale blue glass, and a tall, white building with a horizontal red part within close vicinity to one another. Additionally, I surmised that this shot must be right next to the street, given how close the sidewalk and grass are to each other.

Conspicuous Elements

This looks promising!

I plugged “Vancouver General Hospital” into Google Earth and found that the highlighted elements seemed to be in alignment. With that said, I dropped the little peg man right where I thought the correct spot was, and…

Voila!

Here we stand at 49.26143, -123.12664 in Vancouver, BC.

Thank you for checking this out! Have a blessed day!