An ensemble architecture of deep convolutional Segnet and Unet networks for building semantic segmentation from high-resolution aerial images

Abstract

Building objects is one of the principal features that are essential for updating the geospatial database. Extracting building features from high-resolution imagery automatically and accurately is challenging because of the existence of some obstacles in these images, such as shadows, trees, and cars. Although deep learning approaches have shown significant improvements in the results of image segmentation in recent years, most deep neural networks still cannot achieve highly accurate results with correct segmentation map when processing high-resolution remote sensing images. Therefore, we implemented a new deep neural network named Seg–Unet method, which is a composition of Segnet and Unet techniques, to exploit building objects from high-resolution aerial imagery. Results obtained 92.73% accuracy carried on the Massachusetts building dataset. The proposed technique improved the performance to 0.44%, 1.17%, and 0.14% compared with fully convolutional neural network (FCN), Segnet, and Unet methods, respectively. Results also confirmed the superiority of the proposed method in building extraction.

Keywords:

• Building extraction
• image segmentation
• remote sensing
• Seg–Unet approach

Author contributions

Conceptualization, A.A. and B.P.; methodology and formal analysis, A.A.; data curation, A.A.; writing—original draft preparation, A.A.; writing—review and editing, B.P.; supervision, B.P.; funding, B.P. and A.A.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the Centre for Advanced Modelling and Geospatial Information Systems (CAMGIS), Faculty of Engineering and IT, the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). This research is also supported by Researchers Supporting Project (RSP) number RSP-2020/14, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.