Remote Sensing Image Interpretation With Semantic Graph-Based Methods: A Survey

With the significant improvements in Earth observation (EO) technologies, remote sensing (RS) data exhibit the typical characteristics of Big Data. Propelled by the powerful feature extraction capabilities of intelligent algorithms, RS image interpretation has drawn remarkable attention and achieved progress. However, the semantic relationship and domain knowledge hidden in massive RS images have not been fully exploited. To the best of our knowledge, a comprehensive review of recent achievements regarding semantic graph-based methods for comprehension and interpretation of RS images is still lacking. Specifically, this article discusses the main challenges of RS image interpretation and presents a systematic survey of typical semantic graph-based methodologies for RS knowledge representation and understanding, including the Ontology Model, Geo-Information Tupu, and Semantic Knowledge Graph. Furthermore, we categorize and summarize how the existing technologies address different challenges in RS image interpretation based on semantic graph-based methods, which indicates that the semantic information about potential relationships and prior knowledge of variant RS targets are central to the solution. In addition, a case study of RS geological interpretation based on the semantic knowledge graph is demonstrated to show the promising capability of intelligent RS image interpretation. Finally, the future directions are discussed for further research.