Open Source Centre: Building a Digital twin of the Yu Son

Starting in August of 2025, I worked with the Open Source Center a Non Profit based in London, to reconstruct the Yu Son.

The Yu Son is a UN-sanctioned oil tanker, One of the most active in the DPRK fleet.

Proving that it was laden was an important analytical question, and creating its digital twin was how I chose to answer that question. I helped write a piece called Follow the money that helped expose the Russian Financing of North Korean Oil Transfers, The reconstruction of the Yu Son was presented as a case study in the Investigation. I wrote a follow up piece to Follow the money called Signal In the Shadows where I went into depth into my process of building a digital twin of the Yu Son.

I built a highly accurate 3D digital twin with over 32 Million polygons that allowed us to give definitive proof that the vessel was laden at the time that it was observed in Satellite imagery in the Russian port of Vostochny.

Wireframe + Clay render of the Yu Son

Rear Wireframe + Clay render of the Yu Son

As a part of working on these projects, I developed and deployed a world class CG pipeline called the Digital Twin Reconstruction (DTR) pipeline at the Open Source Centre. Tools which we developed and built as a part of building this pipeline helped us deliver large scale projects like this in record time.

Mooring deck on the Yu Son

Lifeboats and the rear deck of the Yu Son

I also built a Pipeline to convert Digital twins and GEOINT scenes into Interactive Gaussian Splats that can be viewed and seen anywhere interactively.

Building an Interactive Gaussian Splat of the Yu Son

An Interactive Gaussian Splat of the Yu Son can be viewed here.