# BRIGHT: A globally distributed multimodal building damage assessment dataset with very-high-resolution for all-weather disaster response

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.06019 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.06019/

## Key facts

- Cited by 41 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 36 of its 143 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Jan 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [Encoder-Decoder with Atrous Separable Convolution for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.02611/) (2018)
- [SegFormer: Simple and Efficient Design for Semantic Segmentation with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.15203/) (2021)
- [Convolutional LSTM Network: A Machine Learning Approach for Precipitation Nowcasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.04214/) (2015)
- [ADVENT: Adversarial Entropy Minimization for Domain Adaptation in Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.12833/) (2018)
- [Learning to Adapt Structured Output Space for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.10349/) (2018)
- [FDA: Fourier Domain Adaptation for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.05498/) (2020)
- [Generalizing from a Few Examples: A Survey on Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05046/) (2019)
- [Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation with Cross Pseudo Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01226/) (2021)
- [Semi-Supervised Semantic Segmentation with Cross-Consistency Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.09005/) (2020)
- [One-Shot Learning for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.03410/) (2017)
- [Taking A Closer Look at Domain Shift: Category-level Adversaries for Semantics Consistent Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.09478/) (2018)
- [SpectralGPT: Spectral Remote Sensing Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.07113/) (2023)
- [FloodNet: A High Resolution Aerial Imagery Dataset for Post Flood Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02951/) (2020)
- [Advancing Plain Vision Transformer Towards Remote Sensing Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.03987/) (2022)
- [Guided Collaborative Training for Pixel-wise Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.05258/) (2020)
- [Constructing Self-motivated Pyramid Curriculums for Cross-Domain Semantic Segmentation: A Non-Adversarial Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.09547/) (2019)
- [Next Day Wildfire Spread: A Machine Learning Data Set to Predict Wildfire Spreading from Remote-Sensing Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.02447/) (2021)
- [RescueNet: A High Resolution UAV Semantic Segmentation Benchmark Dataset for Natural Disaster Damage Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.12361/) (2022)
- [Landslide4Sense: Reference Benchmark Data and Deep Learning Models for Landslide Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00515/) (2022)
- [RescueNet: Joint Building Segmentation and Damage Assessment from Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07312/) (2020)
- [Large-scale Building Damage Assessment using a Novel Hierarchical Transformer Architecture on Satellite Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.02205/) (2022)
- [Learning from Multimodal and Multitemporal Earth Observation Data for Building Damage Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.06200/) (2020)
- [Dual-Tasks Siamese Transformer Framework for Building Damage Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.10953/) (2022)
- [BDANet: Multiscale Convolutional Neural Network with Cross-directional Attention for Building Damage Assessment from Satellite Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.07364/) (2021)
- [Can We Evaluate Domain Adaptation Models Without Target-Domain Labels?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18712/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [DisasterM3: A Remote Sensing Vision-Language Dataset for Disaster Damage Assessment and Response](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21089/) (2025)
- [SARLANG-1M: A Benchmark for Vision-Language Modeling in SAR Image Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.03254/) (2025)
- [OpenEarthMap-SAR: A Benchmark Synthetic Aperture Radar Dataset for Global High-Resolution Land Cover Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.10891/) (2025)
- [SARMAE: Masked Autoencoder for SAR Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.16635/) (2025)
- [Can LLM Agents Respond to Disasters? Benchmarking Heterogeneous Geospatial Reasoning in Emergency Operations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.11633/) (2026)
- [Enhancing Monocular Height Estimation via Sparse LiDAR-Guided Correction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.06905/) (2025)
- [MM-OVSeg:Multimodal Optical-SAR Fusion for Open-Vocabulary Segmentation in Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.17528/) (2026)
- [SAR-TEXT: A Large-Scale SAR Image-Text Dataset Built with SAR-Narrator and A Progressive Learning Strategy for Downstream Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.18743/) (2025)
- [OmniEarth: A Benchmark for Evaluating Vision-Language Models in Geospatial Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.09471/) (2026)
- [Now you see it, Now you don't: Damage Label Agreement in Drone & Satellite Post-Disaster Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.08117/) (2025)
- [DisasterInsight: A Building-Centric Benchmark for Evaluating Vision--Language Models in Disaster Response](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.18493/) (2026)
- [Building-Guided Pseudo-Label Learning for Cross-Modal Building Damage Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.04941/) (2025)
- [Semantic Change Detection of Roads and Bridges: A Fine-grained Dataset and Multimodal Frequency-driven Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.13212/) (2025)
- [Text-conditioned State Space Model For Domain-generalized Change Detection Visual Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.08974/) (2025)
- [The Potential of Copernicus Satellites for Disaster Response: Retrieving Building Damage from Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.05461/) (2025)
- [ChessMamba: Structure-Aware Interleaving of State Spaces for Change Detection in Remote Sensing Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.19882/) (2025)
- [Smart Transfer: Leveraging Vision Foundation Model for Rapid Building Damage Mapping with Post-Earthquake VHR Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.02627/) (2026)
- [Better with Less: Tackling Heterogeneous Multi-Modal Image Joint Pretraining via Conditioned and Degraded Masked Autoencoder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.16952/) (2026)
- [RAPID: A Reproducible Multi-Agent Pipeline for Interpretable Disaster Damage Assessment from Satellite and Street-View Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.21819/) (2026)
- [Exploring Generalizable Pre-training for Real-world Change Detection via Geometric Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14306/) (2025)
- [A Deep Learning framework for building damage assessment using VHR SAR and geospatial data: demonstration on the 2023 Turkiye Earthquake](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.22338/) (2025)
- [AI and Remote Sensing for Resilient and Sustainable Built Environments: A Review of Current Methods, Open Data and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.01547/) (2025)
- [Matching of SAR and optical images based on transformation to shared modality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.12515/) (2026)
- [Multi-Modal Building Change Detection for Large-Scale Small Changes: Benchmark and Baseline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.19077/) (2026)
- [Prior-guided Fusion of Multimodal Features for Change Detection from Optical-SAR Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.05527/) (2026)
- [A Mamba-Based Multimodal Network for Multiscale Blast-Induced Rapid Structural Damage Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.11709/) (2026)
- [ChangeQuery: Advancing Remote Sensing Change Analysis for Natural and Human-Induced Disasters from Visual Detection to Semantic Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.22333/) (2026)
- [Survey on Disaster Management Datasets for Remote Sensing Based Emergency Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.08196/) (2026)
- [FAF-CD: Frequency-Aware Fusion for Change Detection under Imperfect Multimodal Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.03114/) (2026)
- [JL1-CC&QA: Extending the JL1-CD Benchmark with Change Captioning and Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31745/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Disaster events occur around the world and cause significant damage to human life and property. Earth observation (EO) data enables rapid and comprehensive building damage assessment (BDA), an essential capability in the aftermath of a disaster to reduce human casualties and to inform disaster relief efforts. Recent research focuses on the development of AI models to achieve accurate mapping of unseen disaster events, mostly using optical EO data. However, solutions based on optical data are limited to clear skies and daylight hours, preventing a prompt response to disasters. Integrating multimodal (MM) EO data, particularly the combination of optical and SAR imagery, makes it possible to provide all-weather, day-and-night disaster responses. Despite this potential, the development of robust multimodal AI models has been constrained by the lack of suitable benchmark datasets. In this paper, we present a BDA dataset using veRy-hIGH-resoluTion optical and SAR imagery (BRIGHT) to support AI-based all-weather disaster response. To the best of our knowledge, BRIGHT is the first open-access, globally distributed, event-diverse MM dataset specifically curated to support AI-based disaster response. It covers five types of natural disasters and two types of man-made disasters across 14 regions worldwide, with a particular focus on developing countries where external assistance is most needed. The optical and SAR imagery in BRIGHT, with a spatial resolution between 0.3-1 meters, provides detailed representations of individual buildings, making it ideal for precise BDA. In our experiments, we have tested seven advanced AI models trained with our BRIGHT to validate the transferability and robustness. The dataset and code are available at https://github.com/ChenHongruixuan/BRIGHT. BRIGHT also serves as the official dataset for the 2025 IEEE GRSS Data Fusion Contest.