# Automated National Urban Map Extraction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.06202 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06202/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 7 of its 13 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Apr 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [mixup: Beyond Empirical Risk Minimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.09412/) (2017)
- [CutMix: Regularization Strategy to Train Strong Classifiers with Localizable Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.04899/) (2019)
- [Mixed Precision Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.03740/) (2017)
- [A Relation-Augmented Fully Convolutional Network for Semantic Segmentation in Aerial Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05730/) (2019)
- [TernausNetV2: Fully Convolutional Network for Instance Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.00844/) (2018)
- [Satellite imagery analysis for operational damage assessment in Emergency situations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.00397/) (2018)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Developing countries usually lack the proper governance means to generate and regularly update a national rooftop map. Using traditional photogrammetry and surveying methods to produce a building map at the federal level is costly and time consuming. Using earth observation and deep learning methods, we can bridge this gap and propose an automated pipeline to fetch such national urban maps. This paper aims to exploit the power of fully convolutional neural networks for multi-class buildings' instance segmentation to leverage high object-wise accuracy results. Buildings' instance segmentation from sub-meter high-resolution satellite images can be achieved with relatively high pixel-wise metric scores. We detail all engineering steps to replicate this work and ensure highly accurate results in dense and slum areas witnessed in regions that lack proper urban planning in the Global South. We applied a case study of the proposed pipeline to Lebanon and successfully produced the first comprehensive national building footprint map with approximately 1 Million units with an 84% accuracy. The proposed architecture relies on advanced augmentation techniques to overcome dataset scarcity, which is often the case in developing countries.