MAPLE: Multi-Path Adaptive Propagation with Level-Aware Embeddings for Hierarchical Multi-Label Image Classification

Hierarchical multi-label classification (HMLC) is essential for modeling structured label dependencies in remote sensing. Yet existing approaches struggle in multi-path settings, where images may activate multiple taxonomic branches, leading to underuse of hierarchical information. We propose MAPLE (Multi-Path Adaptive Propagation with Level-Aware Embeddings), a framework that integrates (i) hierarchical semantic initialization from graph-aware textual descriptions, (ii) graph-based structure encoding via graph convolutional networks (GCNs), and (iii) adaptive multi-modal fusion that dynamically balances semantic priors and visual evidence. An adaptive level-aware objective automatically selects appropriate losses per hierarchy level. Evaluations on CORINE-aligned remote sensing datasets (AID, DFC-15, and MLRSNet) show consistent improvements of up to +42% in few-shot regimes while adding only 2.6% parameter overhead, demonstrating that MAPLE effectively and efficiently models hierarchical semantics for Earth observation (EO).

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

Hierarchical multi-label classification (HMLC) is essential for modeling complex label dependencies in remote sensing. Existing methods, however, struggle with multi-path hierarchies where instances belong to multiple branches, and they rarely exploit unlabeled data. We introduce HELM (\textit{Hierarchical and Explicit Label Modeling}), a novel framework that overcomes these limitations. HELM: (i) uses hierarchy-specific class tokens within a Vision Transformer to capture nuanced label interactions; (ii) employs graph convolutional networks to explicitly encode the hierarchical structure and generate hierarchy-aware embeddings; and (iii) integrates a self-supervised branch to effectively leverage unlabeled imagery. We perform a comprehensive evaluation on four remote sensing image (RSI) datasets (UCM, AID, DFC-15, MLRSNet). HELM achieves state-of-the-art performance, consistently outperforming strong baselines in both supervised and semi-supervised settings, demonstrating particular strength in low-label scenarios.