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 This is a pre-print of the following chapter: Arvind W. Kiwelekar, Geetanjali
S. Mahamunkar, Laxman D. Netak, Valmik B Nikam, Deep Learning Techniques
for Geospatial Data Analysis, published in Machine Learning Paradigms,
edited by George A. TsihrintzisLakhmi C. Jain, 2020, publisher Springer, Cham
reproduced with permission of publisher Springer, Cham.
The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-
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Cite this chapter as:
arXiv:2008.13146v1 [cs.AI] 30 Aug 2020

Kiwelekar A.W., Mahamunkar G.S., Netak L.D., Nikam V.B. (2020) Deep
Learning Techniques for Geospatial Data Analysis. In: Tsihrintzis G., Jain L.
(eds) Machine Learning Paradigms. Learning and Analytics in Intelligent Sys-
tems, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49724-8 3.
 Deep Learning Techniques for Geospatial Data
Analysis

Arvind W. Kiwelekar1 , Geetanjali S. Mahamunkar1 , Laxman D. Netak1 , and

Valmik B Nikam2
1
Department of Computer Engineering
Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Technological University
Lonere, Raigad-402103, India
2
Department of Information and Technology
Veermata Jijabai Technical Institute
Mumbai-4000019, India
{awk,ldnetak}@dbatu.ac.in, [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract. Consumer electronic devices such as mobile handsets, goods

tagged with RFID labels, location and position sensors are continuously
generating a vast amount of location enriched data called geospatial data.
Conventionally such geospatial data is used for military applications. In
recent times, many useful civilian applications have been designed and
deployed around such geospatial data. For example, a recommendation
system to suggest restaurants or places of attraction to a tourist visit-
ing a particular locality. At the same time, civic bodies are harnessing
geospatial data generated through remote sensing devices to provide bet-
ter services to citizens such as traffic monitoring, pothole identification,
and weather reporting. Typically such applications are leveraged upon
non-hierarchical machine learning techniques such as Naive-Bayes Clas-
sifiers, Support Vector Machines, and decision trees. Recent advances in
the field of deep-learning showed that Neural Network-based techniques
outperform conventional techniques and provide effective solutions for
many geospatial data analysis tasks such as object recognition, image
classification, and scene understanding. The chapter presents a survey
on the current state of the applications of deep learning techniques for
analyzing geospatial data.
The chapter is organized as below: (i) A brief overview of deep learn-
ing algorithms. (ii)Geospatial Analysis: a Data Science Perspective (iii)
Deep-learning techniques for Remote Sensing data analytics tasks (iv)
Deep-learning techniques for GPS data analytics(iv) Deep-learning tech-
niques for RFID data analytics.

1 Introduction
Deep learning has emerged as a preferred technique to build intelligent products
and services in various application domains. The resurgence of deep learning in
recent times is attributed to three key factors. The first one is the availability
high-performance GPUs necessary to execute computation-intensive deep learn-
ing algorithms. Second, the availability of such hardware at an affordable price.
Also, the third and most important key factor responsible for the success of
deep learning algorithms is the availability of open datasets in various applica-
tion domains such as ImageNet[22] required to train the deep learning algorithms
extensively[17].
The conventional application domains in which deep learning techniques have
been applied effectively are speech recognition, image processing, language mod-
elling and understanding, natural language processing and information retrieval
[10]. All these application domains include processing and retrieving of useful
information from raw multimedia data.
The success of deep learning techniques in these fields triggered its application
in other fields such as Biomedicine [3], Drug Discovery [6], and Geographical
Information System [54].
The chapter presents a state of the art review on applications of deep learning
techniques for geospatial data analysis, one of the fields which is increasingly
applying deep learning techniques to understand our planet earth.

2 Deep Learning: A Brief Overview

The field of Deep Learning is a sub-field of Machine Learning which studies the
techniques for establishing a relationship between input feature variables and
one or more output variables. Many tasks, such as classification and prediction,
can be represented as a mapping between input feature variables and output
variable(s).
For example, the price of a house in a city is a function of input feature
variables such as the number of rooms, built-up area, the locality in a city, and
other such parameters. The goal of the machine learning algorithms is to learn a
mapping function from the given input data set, which is referred to as a training
data set.
For example, the variables x1 , x2 ,.... xn which are input feature variables and
the variable y which is an output variable can be represented as

y = f (x1 , x2 , ....xn )

The input variables are also referred to as independent variables, features,

and predictors. The function f is referred to as a model or hypothesis function.
The training data set may or may not include the values of y, i.e., output
variable. When a machine learning algorithm learns the function f from both
features and output variable, the algorithm is referred to as a supervised al-
gorithm. An unsupervised learning algorithm learns the function f from input
features only without knowing the values of the output variable. Both kinds of
the algorithm have been widely in use to develop intelligent product and services.
There exist many machine learning algorithms (e.g., Linear Regression, Lo-
gistic Regression, Support Vector Machine [12]) which are practical to learn
simple tasks such as predicting house prices based on input features(e.g. the
number of bedrooms, built-up area, locality). The goal of these learning algo-
rithms is to reduce the error in predicting the value of the output variable. This
 Fig. 1. Deep Neural Network.

minimizing goal is captured by a function called cost function. The stochastic

gradient descent is one of the optimization techniques that is commonly used to
achieve the minimization goal.
The conventional machine learning algorithms have been found useful and
effective in learning simple tasks such as predicting house prices and classifying
the tumour as malignant or benign. In such situations, the relationship between
input features and the output variable is a simple linear function involving few
predefined features.
However, they fail to perform effectively in situations where it is difficult
to identify the features required for prediction for example, recognizing the
plant, rivers, animals in a given image. In such situations, the number of input
features required for accurate prediction is large, and the relationship between
input features and the output variable is also complex and non-linear one.
The set of algorithms that belongs to Deep Learning outperforms as com-
pared to conventional machine learning methods in such situations. This sec-
tion briefly describes deep learning techniques that have been found useful for
geospatial data analysis. For more detailed and elaborate discussion on these
techniques, one can refer [17].

2.1 Deep Learning Architectures

The deep learning techniques attempt to reproduce or emulate the working of

the human brain in an artificial context. A network of neurons is the structural
and functional unit of the human brain. Likewise, the Artificial Neural Net-
work (ANN) is the fundamental element underlying most of the deep learning
techniques.

2.2 Deep Neural Networks

A simple ANN consists of three essential elements: (i) Input Layer (ii) Hidden
Layer and (iii) Output Layer. An input layer consists of values of input features,
and an output layer consists of values of output variables. A hidden layer is
referred to as hidden because values held by the neurons in a hidden layer are
not visible during information processing.
A layer consists of more than one information processing nodes called neu-
rons. An artificial neuron is an information processing node taking n-inputs and
producing k-outputs. It is essentially a mapping function whose output is de-
fined in two steps. The first step is the sum of weighted multiplication of all of
its input. Mathematically, it can be represented as:
X
Yi = g( Wij ∗ aj ),
j

where Yi is output of ith node, Wij is the weight of j th input on ith node and
aj is the value of j th input. This operation implements a matrix multiplication
operation which is a linear function. In the second step, the output of the first
step is fed to a non-linear function called an activation function. A neural network
may use any one of the functions (i) Sigmoid function (ii) Hyperbolic tangent
function or (iii) Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU)
The modern deep neural networks consist of more than one hidden layer, as
shown in Figure 1 and ReLU as an activation function.
Training of the DNN is an iterative process which usually implements a
stochastic gradient algorithm to find the parameters or weights of input features.
The weights of the parameters are randomly initialized or used from a pre-trained
model. An error in the prediction is calculated at the output layer. At a hidden
layer, the gradient of error which is a partial derivative of the error with respect
to the existing values of weights is fed back to update the values of weights at
the input layer during next iteration. The process is known as back-propagation
of gradients.
This seemingly simple strategy of learning parameters or weights of a model
works effectively to detect features required for classification and prediction in
many image processing and speech recognition tasks, provided that hardware
required to do matrix multiplication and a large data-set is available. Thus elim-
inating the need for manual feature engineering required for non-hierarchical
classification and prediction mechanism.
The deep neural networks have been successfully used to detect objects such
as handwritten digits, and pedestrians [25]. In general, DNNs have been found
efficient in handling 2-dimensional data that can be represented through a simple
matrix.

2.3 Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)

As seen in the previous section, the input of a hidden layer of DNN is connected
to all the outputs of the previous layer making computations and handling the
number of connections unmanageable in case of high-dimensional matrices. Such
situations arise when image sizes are of high resolutions (1024 X 1024). Also,
the DNNs perform well when the data-set is 2-dimensional. But the majority of
 Fig. 2. Convolutional Neural Network.

multi-modal data sets, for example, coloured images, videos, speech, and text
are of 3-dimensional nature.
The Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) are employed when the data set
is three dimensional in nature and matrix size is very large. For example, a high-
resolution coloured image has three channels of pixels (i.e., Red, Blue, Green)
of size 1024 X 1024.
The architecture of CNN, as shown in Figure 2 can be divided into multiple
stages. These stages perform pre-processing activities such as identifying low-
level features and reducing the number of features, followed by the main task of
classification and prediction as done by a fully connected neural network.
The pre-processing activities are done by convolution layers and pooling lay-
ers.
The convolution layer performs step-wise convolution operation on the given
input data size and a filter bank to create a feature map. Here, a filter is a
matrix of learn-able weights representing a pattern or a motif. The purpose of
the step is to identify low-level features for example, edges in an image. The
underlying assumption of this layer is that low-level features correlate with a
pixel configuration [25].
The pooling layer implements an aggregation operation such as either addi-
tion or maximization or average with an intention to share the weights among
multiple connections. Thus reducing the number of features required for classi-
fication and/or prediction.
These pre-processing stages drastically reduce the number of features in a
fully connected part of CNN.
The CNNs have been found useful in many image processing and speech
recognition tasks. Because the working of CNN is based on the assumption that
many high-level features are the compositions of low-level features. For example,
a group of edges constitute a pattern or a motif, a group of motif constitute a
part of an image, and a group of parts constitute an object [25].

2.4 Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN)

The third type of neural network is Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN). It has
found applications in many fields such as speech recognition and machine lan-
guage translation.
The RNN learns the dependency relationship among the sequence of input
data. Unlike DNN and CNN, which learn relationships among feature variables
 Fig. 3. Recurrent Neural Network.

Fig. 4. Auto-Encoders

and output variables, the RNN learns the relationship between data items fed to
the network at different instances. To do this, RNN maintains a state vector or
memory, which is implemented by connecting the hidden layer of current input
to the hidden layer of previous input, as shown in Figure 3. Hence, the output
of RNN is not only the function of current input data but also the input data
observed so far. As a result, the RNN may give two different outputs for the
same input at two separate instances.
A variant of RNN called RNN with LSTM (Long Short Term Memory) uses
a memory unit to remember long term dependencies between data items in a
sequence. Such networks have been found useful in question answering systems
and symbolic reasoning, which draw a conclusion from a series of premises.

2.5 Auto-Encoders (AE)

The autoencoder is an unsupervised deep neural network architecture. Unlike

supervised deep neural networks (e.g., DNN, CNN, RNN) which establish a
mapping between input and output variables, autoencoders identify patterns in
input data intending to transform the input data items. Reducing the dimensions
of input vector is one example of transformation activity. In such variants, au-
toencoders transform an n-dimensional input vector into k-dimensional output
vector such that k < n. These networks learn two different hypothesis function
called encode and decode. The purpose of the function encode is to transform
input vector x in some other representation z which is defined as

z = encode(x)
where z, and x are vectors with different representations. Similarly, the purpose
of the function decode is to restore the vector z to its original form:

x = decode(z)

The functions encode and decode may be simple linear functions or a complex
non-linear function. In case the data is highly non-linear an architecture called
deep autoencoder with hidden layers is employed.
Autoencoders are typically employed for dimensionality reduction and pre-
training a deep neural network. It has been observed that the performance of
CNN or RNN improves when they are pre-trained with autoencoders [24].

3 Geospatial Analysis:A Data Science Perspective

The purpose of geospatial data analysis is to understand the planet Earth by
collecting, interpreting and visualizing the data about objects, properties and
events happening on, above and below the surface of Earth. Tools that we use
to manage this information influence our knowledge of the Earth. So this section
briefly reviews the technologies that enable geospatial data analysis.

3.1 Enabling Technologies for Geospatial Data Collection

The tools that are being used to collect location-specific information include (i)
Remote Sensing (ii) Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) (iii) Global Positioning
System (GPS) and (iv) Radio Frequency Identifiers (RFID). This section briefly
explains these techniques.

1. Remote Sensing
Remote sensing is a widely used technique to observe and acquire information
about Earth without having any physical contacts. The principle of electro-
magnetic radiation is used to detect and observe objects on Earth. With
Sun as the primary source of electromagnetic radiations, sensors on remote
sensing satellites detect and record energy level of radiations reflected from
the objects on Earth.
Remote sensing can be either active or passive. In passive remote sensing,
the reflected energy level is used to detect objects on Earth while in active
remote sensing the time delay between emission and delay is used to detect
the location, speed, and direction of the object.
The images collected by a remote sensor are characterized primarily by at-
tributes such as spectral resolution and spatial resolution. Spatial resolution
describes the amount of physical area on Earth corresponding to a pixel in
a raster image. Typically it corresponds to 1 to 1000 meter area. Spectral
resolution corresponds to the number of electromagnetic bands used in a
pixel which typically corresponds to 3 bands (e.g., Red, Green and Blue )
to seven visible colours. In hyper-spectral imaging produced by some remote
sensing mechanism, 100 to 1000 bands correspond to a pixel.
 Data acquired through remote sensing have been useful in many geospatial
analysis activities such as precision agriculture[40], in hydrology [20], for
monitoring soil moisture [46] to name a few.
2. Drones and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)
Drones and UAVs are emerging as a cost effective alternative to conventional
satellite-based method of remote sensing for Earth surface imaging [43]. Like
satellite based remote sensing, UAVs are equipped with multi-spectral cam-
eras, infrared cameras, and thermal cameras. A spatial accuracy of 0.5m to
2.5 meter has been reported when UAVs are used for remote sensing [37].
Remote sensing with UAVs have found applications for precision agriculture
[37] and civilian security applications [9].
3. Global Positioning Systems (GPS)
The devices equipped with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) can receive
signals from GPS satellites and can calculate its accurate position. Smart-
phones, Cars and dedicated handheld devices are examples of GPS. These
devices are specifically used for navigation purpose showing directions to a
destination on maps, and monitoring and tracking of movements of objects
of interest. Such devices can identify their locations with an accuracy of 5
meters to 30 centimeters. The location data collected from GPS devices have
been used to identify driving styles [14], to predict traffic conditions [35] and
transportation management.
4. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
It is a low-cost technological alternative to GPS used for asset management.
It is typically preferred when assets to be managed move around a shorter
range. Unlike GPS device, RFID tags are transmitter of radio waves which
are received by RFID tracker to identify the location of RFID tagged device.
Recently data generated by RFID devices have been found useful to recognise
human activities[26], and to predict order completion time [45].

3.2 Geospatial Data Models

The geospatial data models represent information about earth surface and loca-
tions of objects of reference. The data model used to represent this information
depends on the mode used to collect the data. The raster and vector data mod-
els are used, when the mode of data collection used is remote sensing and UAV,
while, GPS and RFID data models are used when mode of data collection GPS
and RFID respectively.
The three data models that are prevalent in the field of remote sensing and
UAV are raster, vector and Triangular Irregular Networks (TIN). In raster data
model the earth surface is represented through points, lines and polygons. In
vector representation, the earth surface is represented through cell matrices that
store numeric values. In TIN data model the earth surface is represented as
non-overlapping contiguous triangles.
The GPS data contains the location information of GPS enabled device in
terms of longitude, latitude, timestamps and the satellites used to locate the
device.
 The RFID data contains information about Identification number of the
RFID tag, location and timestamp.

3.3 Geospatial Data Management

Geographic Information System (GIS) integrates various aspects of geospatial

analysis into one unified tool. It combines multiple geospatial analysis activi-
ties such as capturing of data, storage of data, querying data, presenting and
visualizing data. It provides a user interface for users to perform these activities.
GIS integrates various data capturing technologies such as satellite-based
remote sensing, UAV-based remote sensing, GPS devices, and scanning of paper-
based maps.
GIS uses multiple kinds of data models such as raster data model, vector data
model to represent earth surfaces as a base map. On top of a base map layers
are used to prepare thematic maps showing roads, land cover and population
distributions. Few examples of GIS are ArcGIS [21], Google Earth [18], QGIS[42].

4 Deep learning for Remotely Sensed Data Analytics

Images constitute the significant chunk of data acquired through the method of
remote sensing. These images vary in terms of information representation and
graphical resolution. Typically the images obtained through remote sensing rep-
resent information either in vector or in raster form. Depending on the resolution
of the images, they can be of Low Resolution (LR), High Resolution(HR) and
Very High Resolution(VHR) type.
Deep learning techniques have been found as a promising method to process
images of all kinds. Especially for the purpose of image segmentation[1], image
enhancement [29], and image classification[5], and to identify objects in images
[49].
Applications of deep learning techniques for remotely sensed data analytics
leverage these advancements in the field of image processing to develop novel
applications for geospatial data analysis. This section briefly reviews some of
these recent applications. A detailed survey appears in [30,56].

4.1 Data Pre-processing

The images obtained through remote sensing techniques often are of poor quality
due to atmospheric conditions. The quality of these images needs to be enhanced
to extract useful information from these images.
A set of activities which include denoising, deblurring, super-resolution, pan-
sharpening and image fusion are typically performed on these images. Recently,
geoscientists have started applying deep learning techniques for this purpose.
Table 1 shows application of deep learning techniques for image pre-processing
activities.
 Pre-Processing Example Deep learning Technique
Activity used
Denoising To Restore original cleanA combination of sparse
image from the low quality
coding with denoising
image or image with irrele-
Auto Encoders [50] denois-
vant details. ing CNN[53].
Deblurring Restoring original or sharp
CNN[33], A combination of
image from the blurred im-
Auto-Encoders and Gener-
age. The blurring of images
ative Artificial Neural Net-
occurs due to atmosphericwork (GAN) [34].
turbulence in remote sens-
ing.
Pan Sharpening, In many geospatial appli- Stacked Auto-Encoders
Image Fusion, Su- cations images with high [28], CNN [32].
per Resolution spatial and high spectral
resolutions are required.
The pan sharpening is a
method to combine a LR
multi-spectral image with
a HR panchromatic image.
The super-resolution com-
bines a LR hyper-spectral
(HS) image and a HR MS
image.
Table 1. Application of Deep learning Image Pre-processing

From the table, it can be observed that both supervised(e.g., CNN) and
unsupervised (e.g., Auto-encoders) are used for image pre-processing. Automatic
feature extraction and comparable performance with conventional methods are
some of the motivating factors behind adopting DL techniques for image pre-
processing.

4.2 Feature Engineering

In the context of deep learning, feature engineering is simple as compared with

conventional machine learning techniques because many deep learning techniques
such as CNN automatically extract features. This is one reason to prefer deep
learning techniques for the analysis of remote sensing imagery. However, there
exists other feature engineering steps described below which need to be carried
out for better performance and reuse of knowledge learnt on similar applications.

1. Feature Selection: Feature selection is one of the crucial steps in the feature
engineering aimed to identify the most relevant features that contribute to
establishing the relationship between input and output variables. Earlier
studies observe that three key factors affect the performance of machine
learning techniques[52]. These are (i)choice of data set, (ii) machine learning
 algorithm and (iii) features used for classification or prediction tasks. In
conventional non-hierarchical machine learning methods, regression analysis
is usually performed to select the most relevant features.
Recently, a two stage DL-based technique to select features is proposed in
[13]. It is based on a combination of supervised deep networks and autoen-
coders. Deep networks in the first stage learn complicated low-level repre-
sentations. In the second stage, an unsupervised autoencoders learn sim-
plified representations. Few special DL-techniques specific to geospatial ap-
plication have also been developed in order to extract spatial and spectral
features[55,57] from remotely sensed imagery
2. Feature Fusion: Feature fusion is the process of identifying discriminating
features so that an optimal set of features can be used to either classify
or predict an output variable. For example, feature fusion is performed to
recover a high-resolution image from a low-resolution image [47]. A remote
sensing specific DL- technique is proposed in [27]. The method is designed to
classify hyper-spectral images. In the first stage, an optimal set of multi-scale
features for CNN are extracted from the input data. In the second stage, a
collection of discriminative features are identified by fusing the multi-scale
features.
3. Transfer learning or domain Adaptation: The problem of domain adaptation
is formulated with respect to the classification of remotely sensed images in
[44]. It is defined as adapting a classification model to spectral properties or
spatial regions that are different from the images used for training purposes.
Usually, in such circumstances, a trained model fails to accurately classify
images because of different acquisition method or atmospheric conditions,
and they are called to be sensitive to data shifts. Domain adaptation is
a specialized technique to address the transfer learning problem. Transfer
learning deals a general situation where the features of a trained classifier
model are adapted to classify or predict data that is not stationary over a
period of time or space. For example, images captured through a remote
sensing device vary at day and night time.
A strategy called transduction strategy that adopts DL techniques (e.g., au-
toencoders) has been proposed in [2] to address the problem of transfer
learning. The strategy suggests to pre-train a DL architecture on a test data
set using unsupervised algorithms (e.g., autoencoders) to identify discrimat-
ing features. Here, the test data set is used to pre-train a DL architecture
and the test data set is entirely different from the training data set used to
train a DL architecture. The strategy works to learn abstract representations
because it identifies a set of discriminating features responsible to generalize
the inferences from the observed the data.

4.3 Geospatial Object Detection

The task of detecting or identifying an object of interest such as a road, or an
airplane, or a building from aerial images acquired either through remote sensing
or UAV is referred to as geospatial object detection.
 It is a special case of general problem of object recognition from images.
However with numerous challenges such as small size of the object to be detected,
large number of objects in imagery, and complex environment [8,54] make the
task of object recognition more difficult. Hence, DL-methods have been found
useful in such situations specially to extract low-level features and learn abstract
representations.
When DL-based methods are applied, the models such as CNN are first
trained with geospatial images labeled to separate out the objects of our interest.
The images used for training purposes are optimized to detect a specific object.
These steps can be repeated until the image analysis model accurately detect
multiple types of objects from the given images [15].

4.4 Classification Tasks in Geospatial Analysis

Like in other fields such as Computer Vision and Image processing, the field of
Geospatial Analysis primarily adopts DL-techniques to classify remotely sensed
imagery in various ways to extract useful information and patterns. Some of
these usecases are discussed below.
These classification tasks are either pixel-based or object-based [48]. In pixel-
based classification, pixels are grouped based on spectral properties (e.g., res-
olution). In object based classification, a group pixels are classified using both
spectral and spatial properties into various geometric shapes and patterns. Ei-
ther a supervised (e.g., CNN) or unsupervised algorithms (e.g. Autoencoders)
are applied for the purpose of classification. In comparison with conventional ma-
chine learning techniques, application of DL-based techniques has outperformed
in both scenarios in terms of classification accuracy[54].
Some of the classification activities include.

1. Land Cover Classification:

Observed bio-physical cover over the surface of earth is referred to as land
cover. A set of 17 different categories have been identified by International
Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) to classify earth surface. Some of
these broad categories include Water, Forest, Shrubland, Savannas, Grass-
land, Wetland, Cropland, Urban, Snow, and Barren [11].
There are two primary methods of getting information about land cover:
field survey and remotely sensed imagery. DL-techniques are applied when
information is acquired through remote sensing. In [51,23,39] the pre-trained
CNN model is used to classify different land cover types. CNN is the most
preferred technique to classify earth surface according to land cover. However
other techniques such as RNN are also applied in few cases[41].
2. Land Use Classification:
In this mode of classification, earth surface can be classified according to
their social, economical and political usages. For example, a piece of green-
land may be used as a tennis court or a cricket pitch. A piece of urban can
be used for industrial or residential purposes. So there are no fixed set of
categories or a classification system to differentiate land uses.
 Like in case of land cover classification, CNN [19] is typically used to classify
land uses and to detect change in land cover according their uses [4].
3. Scene Classification:
Scenes in remotely sensed images are high-level semantic entities such as
a densely populated area, a river, a freeway, a golf-course, an airport etc.
Supervised and unsupervised deep learning techniques have been found ef-
fective for scene understanding and scene classification in remotely sensed
imagery [7].

Further, DL-techniques have been applied in specific cases of land use and land
cover classification such as fish species classification [38], crop type classification
[23] and mangrove classification [16].

5 Deep learning for GPS Data Analytics

GPS enabled devices, particularly vehicles, are generating data in the range of
GB/Sec. Such data includes information about exact coordinates, i.e. longitude
and latitude of the device, direction and speed with which the device is moving.
Such information throws light on many behavioural patterns useful for targetted
marketing.
One way to utilize this data is to identify the driving style of a human driver.
Various methods of accelerating, braking, turning under different road and envi-
ronmental conditions determine the driving style of a driver. This information is
useful for multiple business purposes like insurance companies may use to mit-
igate driving risks, to design better vehicles, to train autonomous cars, and to
identify an anonymous driver.
However, identifying features that precisely determine a driving style is a
challenging task. Hence the techniques based on deep learning are useful to ex-
tract such features. W. Dong et al. [14] have applied DL-techniques to GPS data
to characterize the driving styles. The technique is motivated by the applications
of DL-methods in speech recognition. They interpreted GPS data as a time series
and applied CNN and RNN to identify driving styles. The raw data collected
from the GPS devices are transformed to extract statistical features (e.g., mean
and standard deviation) and then it is fed for analysis to CNN and RNN. The
method was validated through identifying the driver’s identity.
In another interesting application, a combination of RNN and Restricted
Boltzman machine [31] is adopted to analyze GPS data for predicting the con-
gestion evolution in a transportation network. The technique effectively predicts
how congestion at a place has a ripple effect at other sites.
GPS data has also been analyzed using DL techniques to manage resources
efficiently. For example, in the construction industry, the usages of GPS enabled
equipment are monitored and analyzed [36].
6 Deep learning for RFID Data Analytics
RFID and GPS are emerging as technologies to ascertain the locations of devices
or assets. However, RFID in comparison with GPS allows to build location-
sensitive applications for shorter geographical coverage. Unlike GPS mechanism,
RFID is a low cost alternative to measure locations of assets with respect to a
RFID tracker. GPS enabled devices provide absolute location information in
terms of longitude and latitude.
The RFID’s potential to accurately measure the location of devices with
respect to a RFID tracker is increasingly being used in automated manufactur-
ing plants. By using the location data transmitted by a RFID tagged device,
various intelligent applications have been designed by applying DL techniques.
These applications are intended to identify patterns and recognise activities in
a manufacturing or a business process.
DL techniques have been found specially effective when activities happens
in a spatio-temporal dimension. For example, in the field of medicine, detecting
activities during trauma resuscitation [26].
In such situations, activity recognition is represented as a multi-class clas-
sification problem. For example, in case of trauma resuscitation, activities are
oxygen preparation, blood pressure measurement, temperature measurement,
and cardiac lead placement. For detecting these activities, a hardware set up of
RFID tagged device along-with RFID tracker is used to collect the data. The
collected data is analysed using CNN to extract relevant features and recognise
the activity during trauma resuscitation.
In another application from manufacturing processes, the deep learning tech-
niques have been used to accurately predict the job completion time. The con-
ventional methods of job completion time rely on use of historical data. Such pre-
dictions greatly vary from the actual job completion time. The method proposed
in [45] adopts RFID tags and trackers to collect real-time data. The collected
data then mapped to historical data using CNN for predicting job completion
time.

7 Conclusion
The scope of the geospatial data analysis is very vast. The data collection meth-
ods vary from manual one to satellite-based remote sensing. Numerous data
models have been developed to represent various aspects of earth surfaces and
objects on earth. These models capture absolute and relative location-specific
information. These models also reveal static and dynamic aspects, spectral and
spatial resolutions. Various GIS tools are being used to integrate and manage
geospatial information.
So far, harnessing this collected information for useful purposes such as to
extract hidden information in the form patterns, behaviours and predictions were
limited by the absence of powerful analysis methods. But the emergence of Deep
learning-based data analysis techniques has opened up new areas for geospatial
applications.
 This chapter presents some of the emerging applications designed around
DL-techniques in the field of geospatial data analysis. These applications are
categorized based on the mode of data collection adopted.
The deep-learning architectures such as CNN and Autoencoders are increas-
ingly used when the method of data collection is remote sensing and UAV.
Applications of DL techniques realize the high-level classification tasks such as
land uses and land covers.
When GPS is the primary method of data collection, the collected data needs
to be interpreted as a sequence or as a series of data. In such situations, RNN,
along with CNN, is increasingly used to identify hidden patterns and behaviours
from the traffic and mobility data collected from GPS enabled devices.
The CNNs are primarily used to process the location-specific information
gathered through RFID device over shorter geographic areas. These analyses
lead to recognize a Spatio-temporal activity in a manufacturing or a business
process and to predict the time required to complete these activities using real-
time data, unlike using historical data for predictive analytics.
These novel applications of DL-techniques in the field of Geospatial Analysis
are improving our knowledge of planet earth, creating new insights about our
behaviour during mobility, assisting us to make decisions (e.g., route selection),
and making us more environmentally conscious citizens (e.g., predictions about
depleting levels of forest land and protections of mangroves).

Acknowledgement:

The authors acknowledge the funding provided by Ministry of Human Resource

Development (MHRD), Government of India, under the Pandit Madan Mohan
National Mission on Teachers Training (PMMMNMTT). The work presented
in this chapter is based on the course material developed to train engineering
teachers on the topics of Geospatial Analysis and Product Design Engineering.

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