Remote Sensing Image Understanding

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Overview

The field develops methods to extract useful information from satellite, aerial, and other overhead images, including optical, multispectral, radar, and hyperspectral data. Common tasks include scene classification, object detection, segmentation, change analysis, and answering questions about image content. Approaches range from convolutional and transformer models to multimodal vision-language systems, often using sensor fusion, geospatial priors, self-supervised pretraining, or tools for inspecting high-resolution scenes. A central challenge is making systems reliable across different sensors, locations, scales, and time periods while grounding fine-grained claims in visual evidence and controlling computational cost.

Latest papers

CardsList

208 papers16 papers in the last four weeks, down 6% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Data-Driven Vision-Language Models for Remote Sensing: A Survey

    Oct 22, 2026Yue Zhou, Shujun Zhao, Xue Yang +7Remote Sensing VLMsRemote Sensing Image Understanding

    School of GeoAI and Hindon STAI Institute, Key Laboratory of Geographic Information Science (Ministry of Education), East China Normal University, Shanghai, China · School of Automation and Intelligent Sensing, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China · Southeast University, China +4

  2. ISW-Agent: Integrating LLM-Driven Dialogue with n8n Workflow for Internal Solitary Wave Remote Sensing Image Processing

    Oct 15, 2026Hao Zhang, Hengrui Liu, Lina Sun +1Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingLLM Agent Orchestration

    First Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Qingdao, China

  3. ReDiS: Reasoning-Diagnosis Self-Evolution for Multimodal Reasoning in Remote Sensing

    Oct 13, 2026Yi Liu, Wentao Jiang, Shuo Ni +5Remote Sensing VLMsMultimodal Reasoning

    School of Computer Science, Wuhan University · Zhongguancun Academy · National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Space-Born Intelligent Information Processing, Beijing Institute of Technology

  4. Omni-RS: Unifying Multi-Task Understanding and Generation in Remote Sensing

    Oct 13, 2026Pan Yin, Shuai Yang, Yuanhao Liu +7Image GenerationUnified Multimodal Models

    Xi’an Jiaotong University

  5. RSAJEV: Training-Free Abstaining Prototype Memory for Eliminating Silent Hallucination in JEV-Based Remote Sensing Classification

    Oct 11, 2026Man Chen, Antai Chen, Shuai Xu +5Remote Sensing Scene ClassificationVLM Hallucination Mitigation

    School of Computer Science and Engineering, Anhui University of Science and Technology, Huainan 232001, Anhui, China, and also with the School of Electrical Automation and Information Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China, and the State Key Laboratory of Digital Intelligent Technology for Unmanned Coal Mining, Huainan 232001, Anhui, China · School of Computer Science and Engineering, Anhui University of Science and Technology, Huainan 232001, Anhui, China · School of Computer Science and Engineering, Anhui University of Science and Technology, Huainan 232001, Anhui, China, and also with the State Key Laboratory of Digital Intelligent Technology for Unmanned Coal Mining, Huainan 232001, Anhui, China +1

  6. Onboard Marine Anomaly Detection on ΦΦsat-2: From Simulation-Based Development to In-Orbit Demonstration

    Oct 8, 2026Clotilde Szywala, Thomas Goudemant, Marjorie Bellizzi +2Anomaly DetectionRemote Sensing Image Understanding

    Institut de Recherche Technologique Saint Exupéry 240 Rue Evariste Galois 06410 Biot, France

  7. SAREO-FM: Decoupled Semantic Supervision for SAR-EO Foundation Models

    Oct 7, 2026Jeonghyeok Do, Munchurl KimRemote Sensing Image UnderstandingMultimodal Pretraining

    Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)

  8. RSJEV: Discriminative Remote Sensing Scene Classification with Multimodal Large Language Models

    Oct 6, 2026Dongchen Si, Di Wang, Mingzhen Xu +3Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingEfficient Multimodal Inference

    School of Computer Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China · State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China

  9. CETUS: How Far Do Representations Trained on Earth Transfer to Cassini SAR of Titan?

    Oct 6, 2026Kevin LeeRemote Sensing Image UnderstandingGeospatial Representation Learning

    University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA · NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA

  10. Why Convolution Still Matters: Evaluating Inductive Biases in Cryospheric Image Classification

    Oct 2, 2026Chhaya Kulkarni, Emam HossainConvolutional Neural NetworksRemote Sensing Image Understanding

    Department of Computer and Information Sciences Towson University · Department of Information Systems University of Maryland, Baltimore County

  11. SigLIP2 for aerial fire risk classification

    Oct 2, 2026Yunus Serhat BıçakçıImage ClassificationWildfire Detection

    Department of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Faculty of Applied Sciences, Marmara University Istanbul, Türkiye

  12. Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Enhanced Radiometer Image Precipitation Estimation using Conditional Flow Matching

    Oct 1, 2026Victor Enescu, Assaad Zeghina, Matthieu Meignin +2Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingUnsupervised Domain Adaptation

    LATMOS/IPSL, UVSQ Universit´e Paris-Saclay, Sorbonne Universit´e, CNRS Guyancourt, France · ARCHES Team, Inria Paris, France

  13. FedMAD: Modulation-Aware Directional Aggregation for Federated Learning in Remote Sensing Image Classification

    Sep 30, 2026Barış Büyüktaş, Begüm DemirRemote Sensing Image UnderstandingFederated Learning Aggregation

    Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Technische Universität Berlin, 10587 Berlin, Germany · BIFOLD - Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data, 10587 Berlin, Germany

  14. Aperture: Training-Free Multiscale Concept Bottlenecks for Remote Sensing

    Sep 29, 2026Rishabh Mondal, Nipun Batra, Utkarsh MallRemote Sensing Image UnderstandingConcept Bottleneck Models

    Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, India · Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, UAE

  15. RS-OPSD: Reliable Privileged On-Policy-Self-Distillation for Ultra-High-Resolution Remote Sensing VQA

    Sep 29, 2026Chengjie Jiang, Yunqi Zhou, Jiafeng Yan +3Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingVisual Question Answering

    Tsinghua University · Zhejiang University · Central University of Finance and Economics +2

  16. Pixel-Level Transformers in Remote Sensing: A Canopy Height Case Study

    Sep 29, 2026Sven Ligensa, Jan Pauls, Karsten Schrödter +2Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingRemote Sensing

    University of Münster Münster, Germany · Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement Paris, France

  17. Label Less, Learn More: Resource-Efficient Active Semi-Supervised Learning for Onboard Satellite Image Annotation

    Sep 25, 2026Ahmed Abdelnaby, Mohamed Elmahallawy, Marius Bernahrndt +1Data-Efficient LearningSemi-Supervised Learning

    School of Engineering and Applied Science, Washington State University, Richland, WA 99354, USA · Institute for Software Technology, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Porz, 51147 Cologne, Germany

  18. WeaveAgent: A Two-Stage Tool-Routing Agent for Ultra-High-Resolution Remote Sensing Imagery

    Sep 25, 2026Zhongyu PangRemote Sensing Image UnderstandingTool Use in VLMs

    Department of Electronics, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China

  19. Exploiting answer-invariant redundancies in satellite imagery for efficient VLM inference on edge

    Sep 24, 2026Ishani Janveja, Davis Zhang, Seoyul Oh +1Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingRemote Sensing VQA

    University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  20. GeoNLI - A Natural Language Interpreter for Satellite Imagery

    Sep 23, 2026Ashutosh Gandhe, Anupam Rawat, Geet Sethi +5Remote Sensing Visual GroundingRemote Sensing VQA

    Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay

  21. A Unified Framework and Dataset for Oriented Object Visual Grounding in Remote Sensing

    Sep 23, 2026Zeyu Ding, Yong Zhou, Jiaqi Zhao +5Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingVision-Language Grounding

    School of Computer Science and Technology/School of Artificial Intelligence, the Mine Digitization Engineering Research Center of the Ministry of Education, and Jiangsu Provincial Industrial Technology Engineering Center for Intelligent Sensing and Emergency IoT in Underground Space, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China · School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5, Canada

  22. The Earth in One Gaze: Training-Free Active Focus for UHR Remote Sensing Understanding

    Sep 23, 2026Yao Zhang, Pengyu Dai, Wei Guo +5Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingRemote Sensing VLMs

    Wuhan University

  23. A multi-temporal dataset for mapping burned areas in the Brazilian Cerrado using time series of remote sensing imagery

    Sep 20, 2026Alisson Cleiton de Oliveira, Thales Sehn KörtingRemote Sensing Image UnderstandingRemote Sensing Benchmarks

    Earth Observation and Geoinformatics Division (DIOTG), National Institute for Space Research (INPE), São José dos Campos, SP, Brazil

  24. MarsFM: Shading-Regularized Flow Matching for Martian Relief Estimation

    Sep 17, 2026Marius F. R. JustonRemote Sensing Image UnderstandingFlow Matching

    Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering The Grainger College of Engineering University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL 61801-3080, USA

  25. Task-Oriented Semantic Feature Transmission for Multi-Task Satellite Remote Sensing over Low-SNR Channels

    Sep 17, 2026Shuoyuan Sun, Hongyu Wang, Mugen Peng +1Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingSemantic Communication

    State Key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications

  26. Semantic-Guided Fusion Network for Multi-Source Remote Sensing Image Classification

    Sep 16, 2026Yuwei Zhao, Chuanzheng Gong, Baogui Huan +3Remote SensingRemote Sensing Image Understanding

    State Key Laboratory of Physical Oceanography, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS 39762 USA

  27. PDA++: Field-Aligned Planning and Scene-Adaptive Insertion in Remote Sensing

    Sep 16, 2026Xianchi Dong, Yingyan Hou, Chao Ren +6Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingSynthetic Data Augmentation

  28. ScopeMamba-YOLO: Widening the Perceptual Scope Inward and Outward for Small Object Detection in Remote Sensing Imagery

    Sep 9, 2026Junjie Fan, Yijun Mai, Linduo Wei +5Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingRemote Sensing Small Object Detection

    School of Intellectual Property, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China · School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China · School of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China

  29. Uncertainty-Aware Sea-Ice Type Mapping with Multiple Ice Charts

    Sep 8, 2026Samira Alkaee Taleghan, Younghyun Koo, Andrew P. Barrett +1Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingAnnotator Disagreement

    University of Colorado Denver Denver, Colorado, USA · National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), CIRES, University of Colorado Boulder Boulder, Colorado, USA

  30. Exploring the Potential of Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training for Multi-Source Remote Sensing Data

    Sep 3, 2026Xiangyang Miao, Kelu Yao, Yekai Huang +7Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingRemote Sensing VLMs

    School of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University · Space-based Computing System Research Center, Zhejiang Lab