# CHOICE: Benchmarking the Remote Sensing Capabilities of Large Vision-Language Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.18145 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18145/

## Key facts

- Cited by 22 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Spatial and embodied reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 39 of its 58 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Nov 2024.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Spatial and embodied reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/lr/spatial-and-embodied-reasoning/)
- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [Embodied and 3D vision-language models](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/embodied-and-3d-vision-language-models/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 39)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [Improved Baselines with Visual Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03744/) (2023)
- [Qwen2-VL: Enhancing Vision-Language Model's Perception of the World at Any Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12191/) (2024)
- [MMBench: Is Your Multi-modal Model an All-around Player?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.06281/) (2023)
- [Phi-3 Technical Report: A Highly Capable Language Model Locally on Your Phone](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14219/) (2024)
- [Evaluating Object Hallucination in Large Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10355/) (2023)
- [ChatGLM: A Family of Large Language Models from GLM-130B to GLM-4 All Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12793/) (2024)
- [MiniCPM-V: A GPT-4V Level MLLM on Your Phone](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.01800/) (2024)
- [How Far Are We to GPT-4V? Closing the Gap to Commercial Multimodal Models with Open-Source Suites](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16821/) (2024)
- [Are We on the Right Way for Evaluating Large Vision-Language Models?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.20330/) (2024)
- [Remote Sensing Image Scene Classification: Benchmark and State of the Art](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.00121/) (2017)
- [LISA: Reasoning Segmentation via Large Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.00692/) (2023)
- [DOTA: A Large-scale Dataset for Object Detection in Aerial Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10398/) (2017)
- [RemoteCLIP: A Vision Language Foundation Model for Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11029/) (2023)
- [SWIFT:A Scalable lightWeight Infrastructure for Fine-Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.05517/) (2024)
- [AID: A Benchmark Dataset for Performance Evaluation of Aerial Scene Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.05167/) (2016)
- [Object Detection in Optical Remote Sensing Images: A Survey and A New Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.00133/) (2019)
- [GeoChat: Grounded Large Vision-Language Model for Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15826/) (2023)
- [mPLUG-Owl3: Towards Long Image-Sequence Understanding in Multi-Modal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.04840/) (2024)
- [PixelLM: Pixel Reasoning with Large Multimodal Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02228/) (2023)
- [Seasonal Contrast: Unsupervised Pre-Training from Uncurated Remote Sensing Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16607/) (2021)
- [RSGPT: A Remote Sensing Vision Language Model and Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15266/) (2023)
- [RSVQA: Visual Question Answering for Remote Sensing Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.07333/) (2020)
- [MMT-Bench: A Comprehensive Multimodal Benchmark for Evaluating Large Vision-Language Models Towards Multitask AGI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16006/) (2024)
- [RS5M and GeoRSCLIP: A Large Scale Vision-Language Dataset and A Large Vision-Language Model for Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11300/) (2023)
- [LHRS-Bot: Empowering Remote Sensing with VGI-Enhanced Large Multimodal Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02544/) (2024)
- [RSVG: Exploring Data and Models for Visual Grounding on Remote Sensing Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.12634/) (2022)
- [VRSBench: A Versatile Vision-Language Benchmark Dataset for Remote Sensing Image Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12384/) (2024)
- [Anchor-free Oriented Proposal Generator for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.01931/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [Geo-R1: Improving Few-Shot Geospatial Referring Expression Understanding with Reinforcement Fine-Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21976/) (2025)
- [GeoZero: Incentivizing Reasoning from Scratch on Geospatial Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.22645/) (2025)
- [SegEarth-R2: Towards Comprehensive Language-guided Segmentation for Remote Sensing Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.20013/) (2025)
- [OpenEarth-Agent: From Tool Calling to Tool Creation for Open-Environment Earth Observation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.22148/) (2026)
- [VLRS-Bench: A Vision-Language Reasoning Benchmark for Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.07045/) (2026)
- [GeoMMBench and GeoMMAgent: Toward Expert-Level Multimodal Intelligence in Geoscience and Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08896/) (2026)
- [GeoAgentBench: A Dynamic Execution Benchmark for Tool-Augmented Agents in Spatial Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.13888/) (2026)
- [GeoAlignCLIP: Enhancing Fine-Grained Vision-Language Alignment in Remote Sensing via Multi-Granular Consistency Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.09566/) (2026)
- [Remote Sensing Image Intelligent Interpretation with the Language-Centered Perspective: Principles, Methods and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.06832/) (2025)
- [RSHallu: Dual-Mode Hallucination Evaluation for Remote-Sensing Multimodal Large Language Models with Domain-Tailored Mitigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.10799/) (2026)
- [UHR-Micro: Diagnosing and Mitigating the Resolution Illusion in Earth Observation VLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.12237/) (2026)
- [Geometric Consistency Protocol for Foundation Model Features in Multi-View Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.17564/) (2026)
- [Is One-Shot In-Context Learning Helpful for Data Selection in Task-Specific Fine-Tuning of Multimodal LLMs?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.28058/) (2026)
- [Can Multimodal Large Language Models Truly Understand Small Objects?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.22884/) (2026)
- [SenseBench: A Benchmark for Remote Sensing Low-Level Visual Perception and Description in Large Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.10576/) (2026)
- [Beyond Appearance: Can Multimodal Large Language Models Exploit Vertical Structure for Remote Sensing Natural Scene Understanding?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.25784/) (2026)
- [RRS-10K: A Multitask Vision-Language Model Benchmark for Rare Remote Sensing Image Interpretation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.24810/) (2026)
- [GeBDA: Building Damage Assessment as Text-Based Sequence Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.28567/) (2026)
- [Earth-Agent-Pro: Towards Real-World Full-Chain Earth Observation with Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.12533/) (2026)
- [RSure-Agent: Reliable Use of Tool Observations for Remote Sensing Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.04836/) (2026)
- [Hallucination-aware Faithful Reasoning in Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.18369/) (2026)
- [ReDiS: Reasoning-Diagnosis Self-Evolution for Multimodal Reasoning in Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.18388/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The rapid advancement of Large Vision-Language Models (VLMs), both general-domain models and those specifically tailored for remote sensing, has demonstrated exceptional perception and reasoning capabilities in Earth observation tasks. However, a benchmark for systematically evaluating their capabilities in this domain is still lacking. To bridge this gap, we propose CHOICE, an extensive benchmark designed to objectively evaluate the hierarchical remote sensing capabilities of VLMs. Focusing on 2 primary capability dimensions essential to remote sensing: perception and reasoning, we further categorize 6 secondary dimensions and 23 leaf tasks to ensure a well-rounded assessment coverage. CHOICE guarantees the quality of all 10,507 problems through a rigorous process of data collection from 50 globally distributed cities, question construction and quality control. The newly curated data and the format of multiple-choice questions with definitive answers allow for an objective and straightforward performance assessment. Our evaluation of 3 proprietary and 21 open-source VLMs highlights their critical limitations within this specialized context. We hope that CHOICE will serve as a valuable resource and offer deeper insights into the challenges and potential of VLMs in the field of remote sensing. We will release CHOICE at [this https URL](https://github.com/ShawnAn-WHU/CHOICE).