Lidberg, William
- Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Abstract
This article compares novel and existing uncertainty quantification approaches for semantic segmentation used in remote sensing applications. We compare the probability estimates produced by a neural network with Monte Carlo dropout-based approaches, including predictive entropy and mutual information, and conformal prediction-based approaches, including feature conformal prediction (FCP) and a novel approach based on conformal regression. The chosen task focuses on identifying ditches and natural streams based on LiDAR derived digital elevation models. We found that FCP's uncertainty estimates aligned best with the neural network's prediction performance, leading to the lowest Area Under the Sparsification Error curve of 0.09. For finding misclassified instances, the network probability was most suitable, requiring a correction of only 3% of the test instances to achieve a Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC) of 0.95. Conformal regression produced the best confident maps, which, at 90% confidence, covered 60% of the area and achieved an MCC of 0.82.
Keywords
Semantic segmentation; Uncertainty quantification; Monte Carlo dropout; Conformal prediction; Small-scale hydrology; LiDAR
Published in
Environmental Modelling and Software
2025, volume: 191, article number: 106488
Publisher: ELSEVIER SCI LTD
SLU Authors
Busarello, Mariana
- Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
- Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
UKÄ Subject classification
Earth Observation
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2025.106488
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/142039