# EO-VAE: Towards A Multi-sensor Tokenizer for Earth Observation Data

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.12177 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.12177/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 14 of its 20 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [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)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Elucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00364/) (2022)
- [WorldSimBench: Towards Video Generation Models as World Simulators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.18072/) (2024)
- [Vector-quantized Image Modeling with Improved VQGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.04627/) (2021)
- [DiffusionSat: A Generative Foundation Model for Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03606/) (2023)
- [Neural Plasticity-Inspired Multimodal Foundation Model for Earth Observation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15356/) (2024)
- [TerraMind: Large-Scale Generative Multimodality for Earth Observation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.11171/) (2025)
- [A Generalizable and Accessible Approach to Machine Learning with Global Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.08168/) (2020)
- [Weight Distillation: Transferring the Knowledge in Neural Network Parameters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.09152/) (2020)
- [TerraMesh: A Planetary Mosaic of Multimodal Earth Observation Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.11172/) (2025)
- [OmniCast: A Masked Latent Diffusion Model for Weather Forecasting Across Time Scales](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.18707/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [EO-WM: A Physically Informed World Model for Probabilistic Earth Observation Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.27277/) (2026)
- [GeoCR: Learning a Generalist Cloud Removal Prior from Heterogeneous Observations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.32510/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

State-of-the-art generative image and video models rely heavily on tokenizers that compress high-dimensional inputs into more efficient latent representations. While this paradigm has revolutionized RGB generation, Earth observation (EO) data presents unique challenges due to diverse sensor specifications and variable spectral channels. We propose EO-VAE, a multi-sensor variational autoencoder designed to serve as a foundational tokenizer for the EO domain. Unlike prior approaches that train separate tokenizers for each modality, EO-VAE utilizes a single model to encode and reconstruct flexible channel combinations via dynamic hypernetworks. Our experiments on the TerraMesh dataset demonstrate that EO-VAE achieves superior reconstruction fidelity compared to the TerraMind tokenizers, establishing a robust baseline for latent generative modeling in remote sensing.