Remote Sensing Image Understanding

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. GroundSet: A Cadastral-Grounded Dataset for Spatial Understanding with Vector Data

    Mar 15, 2026Roger Ferrod, Maël Lecene, Krishna Sapkota +4VLM EvaluationRemote Sensing Image Understanding

  2. Quantum-Enhanced Vision Transformer for Flood Detection using Remote Sensing Imagery

    Mar 14, 2026Soumyajit Maity, Behzad GhanbarianVision TransformerRemote Sensing Image Understanding

  3. HELM: Hierarchical and Explicit Label Modeling with Graph Learning for Multi-Label Image Classification

    Mar 12, 2026Marjan Stoimchev, Boshko Koloski, Jurica Levatić +2Multi-Label ClassificationRemote Sensing Image Understanding

  4. GeoAlignCLIP: Enhancing Fine-Grained Vision-Language Alignment in Remote Sensing via Multi-Granular Consistency Learning

    Mar 10, 2026Xiao Yang, Ronghao Fu, Zhuoran Duan +3Vision-Language AlignmentRemote Sensing Image Understanding

  5. Geometric Knowledge-Assisted Federated Dual Knowledge Distillation Approach Towards Remote Sensing Satellite Imagery

    Mar 8, 2026Luyao Zou, Fei Pan, Jueying Li +4Federated Knowledge DistillationRemote Sensing Image Understanding

  6. SIGMAE: A Spectral-Index-Guided Foundation Model for Multispectral Remote Sensing

    Mar 8, 2026Xiaokang Zhang, Bo Li, Chufeng Zhou +2Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingRemote Sensing

  7. CHMv2: Improvements in Global Canopy Height Mapping using DINOv3

    Mar 6, 2026John Brandt, Seungeun Yi, Jamie Tolan +9Remote SensingRemote Sensing Image Understanding

  8. Demystifying KAN for Vision Tasks: The RepKAN Approach

    Mar 6, 2026Minjong CheonExplainable Image ClassificationRemote Sensing Image Understanding

  9. Remote Sensing Image Classification Using Deep Ensemble Learning

    Mar 6, 2026Niful Islam, Md. Rayhan Ahmed, Nur Mohammad Fahad +4Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingHybrid CNN-Transformer Architectures

  10. Fusion and Grouping Strategies in Deep Learning for Local Climate Zone Classification of Multimodal Remote Sensing Data

    Mar 4, 2026Ancymol Thomas, Jaya Sreevalsan-NairMultimodal FusionRemote Sensing Image Understanding

  11. Any2Any: Unified Arbitrary Modality Translation for Remote Sensing

    Mar 4, 2026Haoyang Chen, Jing Zhang, Hebaixu Wang +7Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingImage-to-Image Translation

  12. Unifying Heterogeneous Multi-Modal Remote Sensing Detection Via Language-Pivoted Pretraining

    Mar 2, 2026Yuxuan Li, Yuming Chen, Yunheng Li +3Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingMultimodal Pretraining

  13. Spectrally Distilled Representations Aligned with Instruction-Augmented LLMs for Satellite Imagery

    Feb 26, 2026Minh Kha Do, Wei Xiang, Kang Han +5Remote Sensing VLMsRemote Sensing Image Understanding

  14. Brewing Stronger Features: Dual-Teacher Distillation for Multispectral Earth Observation

    Feb 23, 2026Filip Wolf, Blaž Rolih, Luka Čehovin ZajcRemote Sensing Image UnderstandingVisual Representation Learning

  15. Satellite-Based Detection of Looted Archaeological Sites Using Machine Learning

    Feb 23, 2026Girmaw Abebe Tadesse, Titien Bartette, Andrew Hassanali +7Cultural HeritageRemote Sensing Image Understanding

  16. FUSAR-GPT : A Spatiotemporal Feature-Embedded and Two-Stage Decoupled Visual Language Model for SAR Imagery

    Feb 22, 2026Xiaokun Zhang, Yi Yang, Ziqi Ye +6Vision-Language ModelsRemote Sensing Image Understanding

  17. Quantum-enhanced satellite image classification

    Feb 20, 2026Qi Zhang, Anton Simen, Carlos Flores-Garrigós +7Hybrid Quantum-Classical MLRemote Sensing Image Understanding

  18. A High-Level Survey of Optical Remote Sensing

    Feb 19, 2026Panagiotis Koletsis, Vasilis Efthymiou, Maria Vakalopoulou +3Remote SensingRemote Sensing Image Understanding

  19. DisasterInsight: A Building-Centric Benchmark for Evaluating Vision--Language Models in Disaster Response

    Jan 26, 2026Sara Tehrani, Yonghao Xu, Leif Haglund +3Building Damage AssessmentRemote Sensing Image Understanding

  20. Toward Realistic Remote Sensing Dataset Distillation with Discriminative Prototype-guided Diffusion

    Jan 22, 2026Yonghao Xu, Pedram Ghamisi, Qihao WengRemote Sensing Image UnderstandingDiffusion Model Distillation

  21. CoLR-Det: Collaborative Latent Restoration for Small Object Detection in Low-Resolution Remote Sensing Images

    Jan 18, 2026Ruo Qi, Linhui Dai, Yusong Qin +2Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingRemote Sensing Small Object Detection

  22. Vision-Language Model for Accurate Crater Detection

    Jan 12, 2026Patrick Bauer, Marius Schwinning, Florian Renk +2Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingRemote Sensing

  23. Semantics-Aware Hierarchical Consensus Learning for Remote Sensing Image Classification

    Oct 6, 2025Giulio Weikmann, Gianmarco Perantoni, Lorenzo BruzzoneHierarchical ClassificationRemote Sensing

  24. A Spatial-Spectral-Frequency Interactive Network for Multimodal Remote Sensing Classification

    Oct 6, 2025Hao Liu, Yunhao Gao, Wei Li +3Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingFrequency-Domain Feature Learning

  25. Post-Disaster Affected Area Segmentation with a Vision Transformer (ViT)-based EVAP Model using Sentinel-2 and Formosat-5 Imagery

    Jul 21, 2025Yi-Shan Chu, Hsuan-Cheng WeiRemote Sensing Image UnderstandingWeakly Supervised Image Segmentation

  26. Copy-Move Forgery Detection and Question Answering for Remote Sensing Image

    Dec 3, 2024Ze Zhang, Enyuan Zhao, Di Niu +3Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingImage Forgery Detection

  27. OrientedFormer: An End-to-End Transformer-Based Oriented Object Detector in Remote Sensing Images

    Sep 29, 2024Zeyu Ding, Yong Zhou, Jiaqi Zhao +4Remote Sensing Image UnderstandingDetection Transformer