# Synthetic Data Augmentation for Satellite-Based Analysis of Battle-Damaged Agricultural Fields in Ukraine

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.16380 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.16380/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Inverse problems and image restoration, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 11 of its 16 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Aug 2026.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Inverse problems and image restoration](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/inverse-problems-and-image-restoration/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Conditional Generative Adversarial Nets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.1784/) (2014)
- [Demystifying MMD GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01401/) (2018)
- [Improved Precision and Recall Metric for Assessing Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.06991/) (2019)
- [AeroGen: Enhancing Remote Sensing Object Detection with Diffusion-Driven Data Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15497/) (2024)
- [A survey of synthetic data augmentation methods in computer vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.10075/) (2024)
- [Data Augmentation in Earth Observation: A Diffusion Model Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06218/) (2024)
- [Mask Conditional Synthetic Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04305/) (2023)
- [Generating Synthetic Satellite Imagery for Rare Objects: An Empirical Comparison of Models and Metrics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.01138/) (2024)
- [Deep Domain Adaptation for Detecting Bomb Craters in Aerial Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.11299/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Monitoring war-induced damage to agricultural land in Ukraine is important for understanding threats to food security, environmental stability, and post-war recovery. However, the development of computer-vision systems for satellite-based damage analysis is limited by the scarcity of labeled imagery, especially for damaged agricultural fields. This work investigates synthetic data augmentation as a method for improving classification under limited and imbalanced training data. We train class-conditional Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) and Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Model (DDPM) architectures on real satellite images and use them to generate additional bombed and not-bombed agricultural-field samples. The generated images are used only for training augmentation, while all downstream evaluation is performed on an exclusively real test set. A Vision Transformer classifier is trained under multiple real and synthetic data configurations to measure the practical utility of each generative approach. The best configuration, based on balanced DDPM augmentation, improves accuracy from 84% to 88%, balanced accuracy from 67% to 81%, macro F1 from 65% to 78%, and recall for the underrepresented not-bombed class from 41% to 69%. These results demonstrate the potential of synthetic satellite imagery for data-scarce geospatial applications in war-affected regions.