Drone Mapping the 140: A Narrative of Architecture in the Conflict Zone

Since the Kurdish regional government in Iraq was established in 1991, the border between the federal government and the KRG has shifted and is in constant dispute. In 2003, under the new Iraqi constitution, article 140 identifies the mechanism to settle the disputed areas through the restoration of all demographic changes and by referendum to decide land claims, to be held no later than 2007. Since then, many attempts to change the demographics and the cultural characteristic of the disputed area have been attempted by both governments in order to secure their political and economic interest in the area. The lack of clarity of the threshold of the disputed area has raised many issues and led to many conflicts between the two governments. Recent events including the rise of the terrorist organization, ISIS, which took control of many of the disputed areas for a period of time, damaged and dramatically changed the demographic and cultural aspects of the region. This thesis explores the potential of drone surveying supplemented by satellite imagery, historical maps, reconnaissance data, photogrammetric maps, remote sensing data, and ground truth to launch a spatial investigation into the disputed territories between the Iraqi central government and the Kurdish regional government. The objective of the thesis is to produce and present architectural evidence and spatiotemporal analysis as an investigation of the changing landscape and architectural forms in which the events and conflicts, triggered by human interference, occurred in the region are registered on. It attempts to identify and elucidate the continuous shifts and changes to the disputed border within the region