The Multi-Temporal Urban Development SpaceNet Dataset

Satellite imagery analytics have numerous human development and disaster response applications, particularly when time series methods are involved. For example, quantifying population statistics is fundamental to 67 of the 231 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Indicators, but the World Bank estimates that over 100 countries currently lack effective Civil Registration systems. To help address this deficit and develop novel computer vision methods for time series data, we present the Multi-Temporal Urban Development SpaceNet (MUDS, also known as SpaceNet 7) dataset. This open source dataset consists of medium resolution (4.0m) satellite imagery mosaics, which includes 24 images (one per month) covering >100 unique geographies, and comprises >40,000 km2 of imagery and exhaustive polygon labels of building footprints therein, totaling over 11M individual annotations. Each building is assigned a unique identifier (i.e. address), which permits tracking of individual objects over time. Label fidelity exceeds image resolution; this "omniscient labeling" is a unique feature of the dataset, and enables surprisingly precise algorithmic models to be crafted. We demonstrate methods to track building footprint construction (or demolition) over time, thereby directly assessing urbanization. Performance is measured with the newly developed SpaceNet Change and Object Tracking (SCOT) metric, which quantifies both object tracking as well as change detection. We demonstrate that despite the moderate resolution of the data, we are able to track individual building identifiers over time. This task has broad implications for disaster preparedness, the environment, infrastructure development, and epidemic prevention.

SpaceNet 6: Multi-Sensor All Weather Mapping Dataset

Within the remote sensing domain, a diverse set of acquisition modalities exist, each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses. Yet, most of the current literature and open datasets only deal with electro-optical (optical) data for different detection and segmentation tasks at high spatial resolutions. optical data is often the preferred choice for geospatial applications, but requires clear skies and little cloud cover to work well. Conversely, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors have the unique capability to penetrate clouds and collect during all weather, day and night conditions. Consequently, SAR data are particularly valuable in the quest to aid disaster response, when weather and cloud cover can obstruct traditional optical sensors. Despite all of these advantages, there is little open data available to researchers to explore the effectiveness of SAR for such applications, particularly at very-high spatial resolutions, i.e. <1m Ground Sample Distance (GSD). To address this problem, we present an open Multi-Sensor All Weather Mapping (MSAW) dataset and challenge, which features two collection modalities (both SAR and optical). The dataset and challenge focus on mapping and building footprint extraction using a combination of these data sources. MSAW covers 120 km^2 over multiple overlapping collects and is annotated with over 48,000 unique building footprints labels, enabling the creation and evaluation of mapping algorithms for multi-modal data. We present a baseline and benchmark for building footprint extraction with SAR data and find that state-of-the-art segmentation models pre-trained on optical data, and then trained on SAR (F1 score of 0.21) outperform those trained on SAR data alone (F1 score of 0.135).

Road Network and Travel Time Extraction from Multiple Look Angles with SpaceNet Data

Identification of road networks and optimal routes directly from remote sensing is of critical importance to a broad array of humanitarian and commercial applications. Yet while identification of road pixels has been attempted before, estimation of route travel times from overhead imagery remains a novel problem, particularly for off-nadir overhead imagery. To this end, we extract road networks with travel time estimates from the SpaceNet MVOI dataset. Utilizing the CRESIv2 framework, we demonstrate the ability to extract road networks in various observation angles and quantify performance at 27 unique nadir angles with the graph-theoretic APLS_length and APLS_time metrics. A minimal gap of 0.03 between APLS_length and APLS_time scores indicates that our approach yields speed limits and travel times with very high fidelity. We also explore the utility of incorporating all available angles during model training, and find a peak score of APLS_time = 0.56. The combined model exhibits greatly improved robustness over angle-specific models, despite the very different appearance of road networks at extremely oblique off-nadir angles versus images captured from directly overhead.

SpaceNet MVOI: a Multi-View Overhead Imagery Dataset

Detection and segmentation of objects in overheard imagery is a challenging task. The variable density, random orientation, small size, and instance-to-instance heterogeneity of objects in overhead imagery calls for approaches distinct from existing models designed for natural scene datasets. Though new overhead imagery datasets are being developed, they almost universally comprise a single view taken from directly overhead ("at nadir"), failing to address one critical variable: look angle. By contrast, views vary in real-world overhead imagery, particularly in dynamic scenarios such as natural disasters where first looks are often over 40 degrees off-nadir. This represents an important challenge to computer vision methods, as changing view angle adds distortions, alters resolution, and changes lighting. At present, the impact of these perturbations for algorithmic detection and segmentation of objects is untested. To address this problem, we introduce the SpaceNet Multi-View Overhead Imagery (MVOI) Dataset, an extension of the SpaceNet open source remote sensing dataset. MVOI comprises 27 unique looks from a broad range of viewing angles (-32 to 54 degrees). Each of these images cover the same geography and are annotated with 126,747 building footprint labels, enabling direct assessment of the impact of viewpoint perturbation on model performance. We benchmark multiple leading segmentation and object detection models on: (1) building detection, (2) generalization to unseen viewing angles and resolutions, and (3) sensitivity of building footprint extraction to changes in resolution. We find that segmentation and object detection models struggle to identify buildings in off-nadir imagery and generalize poorly to unseen views, presenting an important benchmark to explore the broadly relevant challenge of detecting small, heterogeneous target objects in visually dynamic contexts.