Semantic Segmentation of Remotely Sensed Images for Land-use and Land-cover Classification: A Comprehensive Review

Abstract

Remotely Sensed Images (RSI) based land-use and land-cover (LULC) mapping facilitates applications such as forest logging, biodiversity protection, and urban topographical kinetics. This process has gained more attention with the widespread availability of geospatial and remote sensing data. With recent advances in machine learning and the possibility of processing nearly real-time information on the computer, LULC mapping methods broadly fall into two categories: (i) framework-dependent algorithms, where mappings are done using the in-built algorithms in Geographical Information System (GIS) software and (ii) framework-independent algorithms, which are mainly based on deep learning techniques. Both approaches have their unique advantages and challenges. Along with the working patterns and performances of these two methodologies, this comprehensive review thoroughly analyzes deep learning architectures catering different technical capabilities like feature extraction, boundary extraction, transformer-based mechanism based mechanism, attention mechanism, pyramid pooling and lightweight models. To fine-tune these semantic segmentation processes, current technical and domain challenges and insights into future directions for analysing RSIs of varying spatial and temporal resolutions are summarized. Cross domain users with application specific requirements can make use of this study to select appropriate LULC semantic segmentation models. © 2025 IETE.