Considering the classification of high spatial resolution remote sensing imagery, this paper presents a novel classification method for such imagery using deep neural networks. Deep learning methods, such as a fully convolutional network (FCN) model, achieve state-of-the-art performance in natural image semantic segmentation when provided with large-scale datasets and respective labels. To use data efficiently in the training stage, we first pre-segment training images and their labels into small patches as supplements of training data using graph-based segmentation and the selective search method. Subsequently, FCN with atrous convolution is used to perform pixel-wise classification. In the testing stage, post-processing with fully connected conditional random fields (CRFs) is used to refine results. Extensive experiments based on the Vaihingen dataset demonstrate that our method performs better than the reference state-of-the-art networks when applied to high-resolution remote sensing imagery classification.

Remote sensing (RS) images play a significant role in disaster emergency response. Web2.0 changes the way data are created, making it possible for the public to participate in scientific issues. In this paper, an experiment is designed to evaluate the reliability of crowdsourcing buildings collapse assessment in the early time after an earthquake based on aerial remote sensing image. The procedure of RS data pre-processing and crowdsourcing data collection is presented. A probabilistic model including maximum likelihood estimation (MLE), Bayes’ theorem and expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm are applied to quantitatively estimate the individual error-rate and “ground truth” according to multiple participants’ assessment results. An experimental area of Yushu earthquake is provided to present the results contributed by participants. Following the results, some discussion is provided regarding accuracy and variation among participants. The features of buildings labeled as the same damage type are found highly consistent. This suggests that the building damage assessment contributed by crowdsourcing can be treated as reliable samples. This study shows potential for a rapid building collapse assessment through crowdsourcing and quantitatively inferring “ground truth” according to crowdsourcing data in the early time after the earthquake based on aerial remote sensing image.

Class imbalance is a key issue for the application of deep learning for remote sensing image classification because a model generated by imbalanced samples training has low classification accuracy for minority classes. In this study, an accurate classification approach using the multistage sampling method and deep neural networks was proposed to classify imbalanced data. We first balance samples by multistage sampling to obtain the training sets. Then, a state-of-the-art model is adopted by combining the advantages of atrous spatial pyramid pooling (ASPP) and Encoder-Decoder for pixel-wise classification, which are two different types of fully convolutional networks (FCNs) that can obtain contextual information of multiple levels in the Encoder stage. The details and spatial dimensions of targets are restored using such information during the Decoder stage. We employ four deep learning-based classification algorithms (basic FCN, FCN-8S, ASPP, and Encoder-Decoder with ASPP of our approach) on multistage training sets (original, MUS1, and MUS2) of WorldView-3 images in southeastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and GF-2 images in northeastern Beijing for comparison. The experiments show that, compared with existing sets (original, MUS1, and identical) and existing method (cost weighting), the MUS2 training set of multistage sampling significantly enhance the classification performance for minority classes. Our approach shows distinct advantages for imbalanced data.

Due to the cloud coverage of remote-sensing images, the ground object information will be attenuated or even lost, and the texture and spectral information of the image will be changed at the same time. Accurately detecting clouds from remote-sensing images is of great significance to the field of remote sensing. Cloud detection utilizes semantic segmentation to classify remote-sensing images at the pixel level. However, previous studies have focused on the improvement of algorithm performance, and little attention has been paid to the impact of bit depth of remote-sensing images on cloud detection. In this paper, the deep semantic segmentation algorithm UNet is taken as an example, and a set of widely used cloud labeling dataset “L8 Biome” is used as the verification data to explore the relationship between bit depth and segmentation accuracy on different surface landscapes when the algorithm is used for cloud detection. The research results show that when the image is normalized, the effect of cloud detection with a 16-bit remote-sensing image is slightly better than that of an 8-bit remote sensing image; when the image is not normalized, the gap will be widened. However, using 16-bit remote-sensing images for training will take longer. This means data selection and classification do not always need to follow the highest possible bit depth when doing cloud detection but should consider the balance of efficiency and accuracy.

With the rapid development of remote sensing technology, remote sensing products have found increasingly widespread applications across various fields. Nevertheless, as the volume of remote sensing image data continues to grow, traditional data retrieval techniques have encountered several challenges such as substantial query results, data overlap, and variations in data quality. Users need to manually browse and filter a large number of remote sensing datasets, which is a cumbersome and inefficient process. In order to cope with these problems of traditional remote sensing image retrieval methods, this paper proposes a remote sensing image retrieval algorithm for dense data (DD-RSIRA). The algorithm establishes evaluation metrics based on factors like imaging time, cloud coverage, and image coverage. The algorithm utilizes the global grids to create an ensemble coverage relation between images and grids. A locally optimal initial solution is obtained by a greedy algorithm, and then a local search is performed to search for the optimal solution by combining the strategies of weighted gain-loss scheme and novel mechanism. Ultimately, it achieves an optimal coverage of remote sensing images within the region of interest. In this paper, it is shown that the method obtains a smaller number of datasets with lower redundancy and higher data utilization and ensures the data quality to a certain extent in order to accurately meet the requirements of the regional coverage of remote sensing images.

With the rapid growth of remote sensing data, efficiently managing and retrieving large-scale remote sensing images has become a significant challenge. Specifically, for multi-label image retrieval, single-scale feature extraction methods often fail to capture the rich and complex information inherent in these images. Additionally, the sheer volume of data creates challenges in retrieval efficiency. Furthermore, leveraging semantic information for more accurate retrieval remains an open issue. In this paper, we propose a multi-label remote sensing image retrieval method based on an improved Swin Transformer, called Semantically Guided Deep Supervised Hashing (SGDSH). The method aims to enhance feature extraction capabilities and improve retrieval precision. By utilizing multi-scale information through an end-to-end learning approach with a multi-scale feature fusion module, SGDSH effectively integrates both shallow and deep features. A classification layer is introduced to assist in training the hash codes, incorporating RS image category information to improve retrieval accuracy. The model is optimized for multi-label retrieval through a novel loss function that combines classification loss, pairwise similarity loss, and hash code quantization loss. Experimental results on three publicly available remote sensing datasets, with varying sizes and label distributions, demonstrate that SGDSH outperforms state-of-the-art multi-label hashing methods in terms of average accuracy and weighted average precision. Moreover, SGDSH returns more relevant images with higher label similarity to query images. These findings confirm the effectiveness of SGDSH for large-scale remote sensing image retrieval tasks and provide new insights for future research on multi-label remote sensing image retrieval.