# Assessment of a new GeoAI foundation model for flood inundation mapping

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.14500 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.14500/

## Key facts

- Cited by 14 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 11 of its 39 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Sep 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [On the Opportunities and Risks of Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07258/) (2021)
- [DeepLab: Semantic Image Segmentation with Deep Convolutional Nets, Atrous Convolution, and Fully Connected CRFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.00915/) (2016)
- [SegFormer: Simple and Efficient Design for Semantic Segmentation with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.15203/) (2021)
- [Masked-attention Mask Transformer for Universal Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01527/) (2021)
- [SegNet: A Deep Convolutional Encoder-Decoder Architecture for Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.00561/) (2015)
- [Rethinking Semantic Segmentation from a Sequence-to-Sequence Perspective with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15840/) (2020)
- [ResUNet-a: a deep learning framework for semantic segmentation of remotely sensed data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.00592/) (2019)
- [Semantic Segmentation using Vision Transformers: A survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.03273/) (2023)
- [Explainable GeoAI: Can saliency maps help interpret artificial intelligence's learning process? An empirical study on natural feature detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09660/) (2023)
- [Real-time GeoAI for High-resolution Mapping and Segmentation of Arctic Permafrost Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05341/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [Prithvi-EO-2.0: A Versatile Multi-Temporal Foundation Model for Earth Observation Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.02732/) (2024)
- [Foundation Models for Geospatial Reasoning: Assessing Capabilities of Large Language Models in Understanding Geometries and Topological Spatial Relations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.17136/) (2025)
- [UrbanSARFloods: Sentinel-1 SLC-Based Benchmark Dataset for Urban and Open-Area Flood Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04111/) (2024)
- [Geospatial foundation models for image analysis: evaluating and enhancing NASA-IBM Prithvi's domain adaptability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00489/) (2024)
- [Improving Interpretability of Deep Active Learning for Flood Inundation Mapping Through Class Ambiguity Indices Using Multi-spectral Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.19043/) (2024)
- [GeoAI Reproducibility and Replicability: a computational and spatial perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.10108/) (2024)
- [Flood Mapping from RGB imagery using a Vision Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.24120/) (2026)
- [ZeroFlood: Flood Hazard Mapping from Single-Modality SAR Using Geo-Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.23364/) (2025)
- [Landslide Hazard Mapping with Geospatial Foundation Models: Geographical Generalizability, Data Scarcity, and Band Adaptability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.04474/) (2025)
- [Prithvi-Complimentary Adaptive Fusion Encoder (CAFE): unlocking full-potential for flood inundation mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.02315/) (2026)
- [Beyond Backscatter: AlphaEarth Land-Cover Priors for Rapid SAR Flood Segmentation Across Foundation Backbones](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.29134/) (2026)
- [Geospatial Artificial Intelligence for Satellite-Based Flood Extent Mapping: Concepts, Advances, and Future Perspectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02214/) (2025)
- [Evaluating the Alignment Between GeoAI Explanations and Domain Knowledge in Satellite-Based Flood Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.26051/) (2026)
- [Cross-Architecture Foundation-Model Distillation for Edge Flood Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.20441/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Vision foundation models are a new frontier in Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI), an interdisciplinary research area that applies and extends AI for geospatial problem solving and geographic knowledge discovery, because of their potential to enable powerful image analysis by learning and extracting important image features from vast amounts of geospatial data. This paper evaluates the performance of the first-of-its-kind geospatial foundation model, IBM-NASA's Prithvi, to support a crucial geospatial analysis task: flood inundation mapping. This model is compared with convolutional neural network and vision transformer-based architectures in terms of mapping accuracy for flooded areas. A benchmark dataset, Sen1Floods11, is used in the experiments, and the models' predictability, generalizability, and transferability are evaluated based on both a test dataset and a dataset that is completely unseen by the model. Results show the good transferability of the Prithvi model, highlighting its performance advantages in segmenting flooded areas in previously unseen regions. The findings also indicate areas for improvement for the Prithvi model in terms of adopting multi-scale representation learning, developing more end-to-end pipelines for high-level image analysis tasks, and offering more flexibility in terms of input data bands.