Deep learning to detect built cultural heritage from satellite imagery. - Spatial distribution and size of vernacular houses in Sumba, Indonesia -

Abstract In Sumba Island – Indonesia, the implantation of vernacular houses, inside and outside traditional villages, is considered to be an efficient proxy for the on-going complex cultural transformations resulting from globalization. This study presents an easily reproducible workflow allowing buildings to be automatically detected from satellite imagery, demonstrating how modern computer vision methods based on deep learning can help in this task, which would be far too time-consuming when undertaken by hand. Eight deep learning architectures based on convolutional neural networks were compared in terms of ability to identify and locate precisely traditional houses from satellite images…