When you look at the chart below (Figure 4.1), you will see a series of steady orange and black bars followed by a large spike in 2016. Once you take a closer look at the caption you will understand that this chart shows the number of structures destroyed and people affected by Israel's policy of home demolitions.

As Nathan Yau, author of Flowing Data, put it, “data is an abstraction of real life” (2013). Each number represents a family, and each number tells a story.

“Broken Homes” is the most comprehensive project to date tracking home demolitions in East Jerusalem, a Palestinian neighbourhood that has been occupied by Israel for 50 years.

Working closely with the United Nations, Al Jazeera tracked every single home demolition in East Jerusalem in 2016. It turned out to be a record year, with 190 structures destroyed and more than 1,200 Palestinians displaced or affected.

We decided to tackle this project after witnessing an escalation in violence between Israelis and Palestinians in late 2015. The goal was twofold: To understand how Israel's home demolitions policy would be affected by the increased tensions, and to tell readers the human stories behind the data.

The project reveals the impact on Palestinian families through video testimony, 360-degree photos and an interactive map that highlights the location, frequency and impact of each demolition.

Our producer in Doha began coordinating with the UN in late 2015 to develop a framework for the project. The UN routinely gathers data on home demolitions, and while some of it is available online, other aspects—including GPS coordinates—are only recorded internally. We wanted to be able to show every demolition site on a map, so we began obtaining monthly data sets from the UN. For each incident, we included the demolition date, number of people and structures affected, a brief description of what happened, and a point on our East Jerusalem map showing the location. We cross-checked these with news reports and other local information about home demolitions.