Land-area classification (LAC) research offers a promising avenue to address the intricacies of urban planning, agricultural zoning, and environmental monitoring, with a specific focus on urban areas and their complex land usage patterns. The potential of LAC research is significantly propelled by advancements in high-resolution satellite imagery and machine learning strategies, particularly the use of convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Accurate LAC is paramount for informed urban development and effective land management. Traditional remote-sensing methods encounter limitations in precisely classifying dynamic and complex urban land areas. Therefore, in this study, we investigated the application of transfer learning with Inception-v3 and DenseNet121 architectures to establish a reliable LAC system for identifying urban land use classes. Leveraging transfer learning with these models provided distinct advantages, as it allows the LAC system to benefit from pre-trained features on large datasets, enhancing model generalization and performance compared to starting from scratch. Transfer learning also facilitates the effective utilization of limited labeled data for fine-tuning, making it a valuable strategy for optimizing model accuracy in complex urban land classification tasks. Moreover, we strategically employ fine-tuned versions of Inception-v3 and DenseNet121 networks, emphasizing the transformative impact of these architectures. The fine-tuning process enables the model to leverage pre-existing knowledge from extensive datasets, enhancing its adaptability to the intricacies of LC classification. By aligning with these advanced techniques, our research not only contributes to the evolution of remote-sensing methodologies but also underscores the paramount importance of incorporating cutting-edge methodologies, such as fine-tuning and the use of specific network architectures, in the continual enhancement of LC classification systems. Through experiments conducted on the UC-Merced_LandUse dataset, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, achieving remarkable results, including 92% accuracy, 93% recall, 92% precision, and a 92% F1-score. Moreover, employing heatmap analysis further elucidates the decision-making process of the models, providing insights into the classification mechanism. The successful application of CNNs in LAC, coupled with heatmap analysis, opens promising avenues for enhanced urban planning, agricultural zoning, and environmental monitoring through more accurate and automated land-area classification.

The recognition of fire at its early stages and stopping it from causing socioeconomic and environmental disasters remains a demanding task. Despite the availability of convincing networks, there is a need to develop a lightweight network for resource-constraint devices rather than real-time fire detection in smart city contexts. To overcome this shortcoming, we presented a novel efficient lightweight network called FlameNet for fire detection in a smart city environment. Our proposed network works via two main steps: first, it detects the fire using the FlameNet; then, an alert is initiated and directed to the fire, medical, and rescue departments. Furthermore, we incorporate the MSA module to efficiently prioritize and enhance relevant fire-related prominent features for effective fire detection. The newly developed Ignited-Flames dataset is utilized to undertake a thorough analysis of several convolutional neural network (CNN) models. Additionally, the proposed FlameNet achieves 99.40% accuracy for fire detection. The empirical findings and analysis of multiple factors such as model accuracy, size, and processing time prove that the suggested model is suitable for fire detection.