In what the UN describes as the world's fastest growing refugee crisis, almost 700 000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar for neighbouring Bangladesh since August 2017. With the Bangladesh government proposing a vulnerable low-lying island as a relocation site for thousands, Sentinel-1 data have shown how unsuitable this site would be.

While the Rohingya have faced decades of repression, this recent mass exodus is blamed on large-scale atrocities committed by the Myanmar military.

Not only has the pace of arrivals in Bangladesh made this the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world, but the concentration of displaced people now in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar is amongst the densest in the world.