# Bridging Data Islands: Geographic Heterogeneity-Aware Federated Learning for Collaborative Remote Sensing Semantic Segmentation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.09292 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09292/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 22 of its 53 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Apr 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [Encoder-Decoder with Atrous Separable Convolution for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.02611/) (2018)
- [Federated Optimization in Heterogeneous Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.06127/) (2018)
- [SegFormer: Simple and Efficient Design for Semantic Segmentation with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.15203/) (2021)
- [Deep High-Resolution Representation Learning for Visual Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07919/) (2019)
- [Federated Learning on Non-IID Data Silos: An Experimental Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.02079/) (2021)
- [Deep Long-Tailed Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.04596/) (2021)
- [FedDG: Federated Domain Generalization on Medical Image Segmentation via Episodic Learning in Continuous Frequency Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.06030/) (2021)
- [Heterogeneous Federated Learning: State-of-the-art and Research Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10616/) (2023)
- [Local Learning Matters: Rethinking Data Heterogeneity in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14213/) (2021)
- [Rethinking Architecture Design for Tackling Data Heterogeneity in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06047/) (2021)
- [Improving Generalization in Federated Learning by Seeking Flat Minima](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11834/) (2022)
- [DynamicEarthNet: Daily Multi-Spectral Satellite Dataset for Semantic Change Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.12560/) (2022)
- [Federated Learning on Heterogeneous and Long-Tailed Data via Classifier Re-Training with Federated Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.13399/) (2022)
- [Differentially Private Secure Multi-Party Computation for Federated Learning in Financial Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.05867/) (2020)
- [Closing the Generalization Gap of Cross-silo Federated Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.10144/) (2022)
- [FedDrive: Generalizing Federated Learning to Semantic Segmentation in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.13670/) (2022)
- [Federated Incremental Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04620/) (2023)
- [Enabling Country-Scale Land Cover Mapping with Meter-Resolution Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.00727/) (2022)
- [Federated Learning in the Sky: Aerial-Ground Air Quality Sensing Framework with UAV Swarms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.12004/) (2020)
- [FRAug: Tackling Federated Learning with Non-IID Features via Representation Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.14900/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [FedRSClip: Federated Learning for Remote Sensing Scene Classification Using Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.02461/) (2025)
- [FedSaaS: Class-Consistency Federated Semantic Segmentation via Global Prototype Supervision and Local Adversarial Harmonization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09385/) (2025)
- [FedEU: Evidential Uncertainty-Driven Federated Fine-Tuning of Vision Foundation Models for Remote Sensing Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.07468/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Remote sensing semantic segmentation (RSS) is an essential technology in earth observation missions. Due to concerns over geographic information security, data privacy, storage bottleneck and industry competition, high-quality annotated remote sensing images are often isolated and distributed across institutions. The issue of remote sensing data islands poses challenges for fully utilizing isolated datasets to train a global model. Federated learning (FL), a privacy-preserving distributed collaborative learning technology, offers a potential solution to leverage isolated remote sensing data. Typically, remote sensing images from different institutions exhibit significant geographic heterogeneity, characterized by coupled class-distribution heterogeneity and object-appearance heterogeneity. However, existing FL methods lack consideration of them, leading to a decline in the performance of the global model when FL is directly applied to RSS. We propose a novel Geographic heterogeneity-aware Federated learning (GeoFed) framework to bridge data islands in RSS. Our framework consists of three modules, including the Global Insight Enhancement (GIE) module, the Essential Feature Mining (EFM) module and the Local-Global Balance (LoGo) module. Through the GIE module, class distribution heterogeneity is alleviated by introducing a prior global class distribution vector. We design an EFM module to alleviate object appearance heterogeneity by constructing essential features. Furthermore, the LoGo module enables the model to possess both global generalization capability and local adaptation. Extensive experiments on three public datasets (i.e., FedFBP, FedCASID, FedInria) demonstrate that our GeoFed framework consistently outperforms the current state-of-the-art methods.