Using street view images and visual LLMs to predict heritage values for governance support: Risks, ethics, and policy implications
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Abstract (arXiv)
During 2025 and 2026, the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive is being implemented in the European Union member states, requiring all member states to have National Building Renovation Plans. In Sweden, there is no comprehensive national register of buildings with heritage values. This is seen as a barrier for the analyses underlying the development of Building Renovation Plans by the involved Swedish authorities. The purpose of this research was to assist Swedish authorities in developing information on heritage values in the Swedish building stock. Buildings in street view images from all over Sweden (N=154 710) have been analysed using multimodal Large Language Models (LLM) to assess visible aspects indicative of heritage value. Zero-shot predictions by LLMs were used as a basis for identifying buildings with potential heritage values for 5.0 million square meters of heated floor area. In this paper, the results of the predictions and lessons learned are presented and related to the development of the Swedish Building Renovation Plan as part of governance. The problems with the method and potential improvements are discussed. Risks with authorities use of LLM-based data are addressed, with a focus on issues of transparency, error detection and sycophancy.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 14 of its 72 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 22 Dec 2025.
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14 of 72 references.
References · 14
- 2023A Prompt Pattern Catalog to Enhance Prompt Engineering with ChatGPTcited by 619
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- 2024An Autonomous GIS Agent Framework for Geospatial Data Retrievalcited by 26
- 2025GlobalBuildingAtlas: An Open Global and Complete Dataset of Building Polygons, Heights and LoD1 3D Modelscited by 16
- 2024Coverage and Bias of Street View Imagery in Mapping the Urban Environmentcited by 12
- 2025Effects of Prompt Length on Domain-specific Tasks for Large Language Modelscited by 11
- 2024To use or not to use proprietary street view images in (health and place) research? That is the questioncited by 10
- 2025Global urban visual perception varies across demographics and personalitiescited by 10
- 2024Zero-shot Building Age Classification from Facade Image Using GPT-4cited by 8
- 2025OpenFACADES: An Open Framework for Architectural Caption and Attribute Data Enrichment via Street View Imagerycited by 8
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- 2024BuildingView: Constructing Urban Building Exteriors Databases with Street View Imagery and Multimodal Large Language Mode
- 2026Leveraging Multimodal LLMs for Built Environment and Housing Attribute Assessment from Street-View Imagery
- 2026AI vs Human Expert Reasoning: Assessing Agreements in Building Typology Predictions based on Street View Imagery
- 2024Identification of Stone Deterioration Patterns with Large Multimodal Models
- 2025ArchiLense: A Framework for Quantitative Analysis of Architectural Styles Based on Vision Large Language Models
- 2025Beyond Memorization: A Multi-Modal Ordinal Regression Benchmark to Expose Popularity Bias in Vision-Language Models
- 2025Can a Large Language Model Assess Urban Design Quality? Evaluating Walkability Metrics Across Expertise Levels
- 2026Multimodal Cultural Heritage Knowledge Graph Extension with Language and Vision Models