# OSMGen: Highly Controllable Satellite Image Synthesis using OpenStreetMap Data

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.00345 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.00345/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 26 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Nov 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01626/) (2022)
- [SDEdit: Guided Image Synthesis and Editing with Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.01073/) (2021)
- [Null-text Inversion for Editing Real Images using Guided Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09794/) (2022)
- [Functional Map of the World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07846/) (2017)
- [LayoutDiffusion: Controllable Diffusion Model for Layout-to-image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17189/) (2023)
- [An Edit Friendly DDPM Noise Space: Inversion and Manipulations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06140/) (2023)
- [Time2Vec: Learning a Vector Representation of Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05321/) (2019)
- [SatCLIP: Global, General-Purpose Location Embeddings with Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17179/) (2023)
- [DiffusionSat: A Generative Foundation Model for Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03606/) (2023)
- [LayoutLLM-T2I: Eliciting Layout Guidance from LLM for Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.05095/) (2023)
- [LayoutDiffuse: Adapting Foundational Diffusion Models for Layout-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08908/) (2023)
- [CRS-Diff: Controllable Remote Sensing Image Generation with Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11614/) (2024)
- [Context-Aware Layout to Image Generation with Enhanced Object Appearance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11897/) (2021)
- [Changen2: Multi-Temporal Remote Sensing Generative Change Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.17998/) (2024)
- [Generate Your Own Scotland: Satellite Image Generation Conditioned on Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16648/) (2023)
- [ChangeDiff: A Multi-Temporal Change Detection Data Generator with Flexible Text Prompts via Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15541/) (2024)
- [CC-Diff: Enhancing Contextual Coherence in Remote Sensing Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.08464/) (2024)
- [Updating Street Maps using Changes Detected in Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06456/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Accurate and up-to-date geospatial data are essential for urban planning, infrastructure monitoring, and environmental management. Yet, automating urban monitoring remains difficult because curated datasets of specific urban features and their changes are scarce. We introduce OSMGen, a generative framework that creates realistic satellite imagery directly from raw OpenStreetMap (OSM) data. Unlike prior work that relies on raster tiles, OSMGen uses the full richness of OSM JSON, including vector geometries, semantic tags, location, and time, giving fine-grained control over how scenes are generated. A central feature of the framework is the ability to produce consistent before-after image pairs: user edits to OSM inputs translate into targeted visual changes, while the rest of the scene is preserved. This makes it possible to generate training data that addresses scarcity and class imbalance, and to give planners a simple way to preview proposed interventions by editing map data. More broadly, OSMGen produces paired (JSON, image) data for both static and changed states, paving the way toward a closed-loop system where satellite imagery can automatically drive structured OSM updates. Source code is available at https://github.com/amir-zsh/OSMGen.