Remote Sensing SpatioTemporal Vision-Language Models: A Comprehensive Survey

Chenyang Liu · Jiafan Zhang · Keyan Chen · Man Wang · Zhengxia Zou · Zhenwei Shi*✉

This repo is used for recording, and tracking recent Remote Sensing Spatio-Temporal Vision-Language Models (RS-STVLMs). If you find any work missing or have any suggestions (papers, implementations, and other resources), feel free to pull requests.

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✨ Highlight!!

✅ The first survey for Remote Sensing Spatio-Temporal Vision-Language Models.

✅ Some public datasets and code links are provided.

✅ We will continue to track related work in this repository.

📖 Introduction

Timeline of RS-STVLMs:

📖 Table of Contents

• 📚 Remote Sensing Spatio-Temporal Vision-language Tasks and Methods
  • Change Captioning
  • Multitask Learning of Change Detection and Change Captioning
  • Change Question Answeringg
  • Text-driven Temporal Images Retrieval
  • Change Grounding
  • Text-driven Temporal Images Generation
  • ......
• 👨‍🏫 Large Language Models Meets Temporal Images
  • LLM-driven Task-Specific Spatio-Temporal VLMs
  • Unified Spatio-Temporal Vision-Language Foundation Models
  • LLM-driven Remote Sensing Vision-Language Agents
  • ......
• 🛰️ Dataset
  • Matching Temporal Images, Text, and Masks
  • Matching Temporal Images, Instruction and Response
  • ......
• 💻 Others
• 🖊️ Citation
• 🐲 Contact

📚 Remote Sensing Spatio-Temporal Vision-language Tasks and Methods

Change Captioning

Time	Model Name	Paper Title	Visual Encoder	Language Decoder	Code/Project
2021.10	CNN-RNN	Captioning changes in bi-temporal remote sensing images	VGG-16	RNN	N/A
2022.08	CC-RNN/SVM	Change captioning: A new paradigm for multitemporal remote sensing image analysis	VGG-16	RNN,SVM	N/A
2022.11	RSICCformer	Remote sensing image change captioning with dual-branch transformers: A new method and a large scale dataset	ResNet-101	Transformer Decoder
2023.07	PSNet	Progressive Scale-aware Network for Remote sensing Image Change Captioning	ViT-B/32	Transformer Decoder
2023.10	PromptCC	A Decoupling Paradigm with Prompt Learning for Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning	ViT-B/32	GPT-2
2023.11	Chg2Cap	Changes to Captions: An Attentive Network for Remote Sensing Change Captioning	ResNet-101	Transformer Decoder
2023.11	ICT-Net	Interactive Change-Aware Transformer Network for Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning	ResNet-101	Transformer Decoder
2024.03	SITS-CC	Change Caption for Satellite Images Time Series	ResNet-101	Transformer Decoder
2024.05	RSCaMa	RSCaMa: Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning with State Space Model	ViT-B/32	Mamba, Transformer Decoder, GPT-2
2024.05	SparseFocus	A Lightweight Sparse Focus Transformer for Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning	ResNet-101	Transformer Decoder
2024.05	SEN	Single-stream Extractor Network with Contrastive Pre-training for Remote Sensing Change Captioning	ResNet with 6-channel	Transformer Decoder
2024.05	Diffusion-RSCC	Diffusion model for learning cross-modal data distribution	ResNet-101	Diffusion
2024.05	CARD	Context-aware Difference Distilling for Multi-change Captioning	ResNet-101	Transformer Decoder
2024.06	ChangeRetCap	Towards a multimodal framework for remote sensing image change retrieval and captioning	ResNet-101	Transformer Decoder
2024.06	Intelli-Change	Intelli-Change Remote Sensing - A Novel Transformer Approach	ResNet-101	Transformer Decoder	N/A
2024.06	ChangeExp	Towards Temporal Change Explanations from Bi-Temporal Satellite Images	LLaVA-1.5	LLaVA-1.5	N/A
2024.07	MAF-Net	Multi-scale Attentive Fusion Network for Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning	ResNet-101	Transformer Decoder	N/A
2024.07	SFEN	Scale-wised feature enhancement network for change captioning of remote sensing images	WideResNet	Transformer Decoder	N/A
2024.09	MfrNet	MfrNet: A New Multi-Scale Feature Refining Method for Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning	ResNet-18	Transformer Decoder	N/A
2024.09	SEIFNet	Inter-Temporal Interaction and Symmetric Difference Learning for Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning	ResNet-101	Transformer Decoder
2024.10	MV-CC	MV-CC: Mask Enhanced Video Model for Remote Sensing Change Caption	InternVideo2	Transformer Decoder
2024.10	Chareption	Chareption: Change-Aware Adaption Empowers Large Language Model for Effective Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning	CLIP ViT-L/14	LLaMA-7B	N/A
2024.11	MADiffCC	Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning Using Multi-Attentive Network with Diffusion Model	Diffusion	Transformer Decoder	N/A
2024.11	CCExpert	CCExpert: Advancing MLLM Capability in Remote Sensing Change Captioning with Difference-Aware Integration and a Foundational Dataset	Diffusion	Transformer Decoder
2024.12	---	Data Augmentation in Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning	ViT-B/32	Transformer Decoder	N/A
2024.12	Mask Approx Net	Mask Approximation Net: A Novel Diffusion Model Approach for Remote Sensing Change Captioning	ResNet	Transformer Decoder	Link
2025.01	SAT-Cap	Change Captioning in Remote Sensing: Evolution to SAT-Cap -- A Single-Stage Transformer Approach	ResNet-101	Transformer Decoder
2025.01	MModalCC	Robust Change Captioning in Remote Sensing: SECOND-CC Dataset and MModalCC Framework	ResNet-101	Transformer Decoder
2025.01	SGD-RSCCN	Scene Graph and Dependency Grammar Enhanced Remote Sensing Change Caption Network (SGD-RSCCN)	ResNet-101	Transformer Decoder	N/A
2025.02	TGIPG	Image Editing based on Diffusion Model for Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning	//	//	N/A
2025.03	Change3D	Change3D: Revisiting Change Detection and Captioning from A Video Modeling Perspective	X3D-L(video)	Transformer Decoder
2025.03	CD4C	CD4C: Change Detection for Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning	ResNet-101	Transformer Decoder	N/A
2025.04	RDD+ACR	Region-aware Difference Distilling with Attribute-guided Contrastive Regularization for Change Captioning	ResNet-101	Transformer Decoder	N/A
2025.04	FST-Net	Frequency–Spatial–Temporal Domain Fusion Network for Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning	Segformer	Transformer Decoder	N/A
2025.05	CTSD-Net	A Cross-Spatial Differential Localization Network for Remote Sensing Change Captioning	SegFormer	Transformer Decoder	N/A
2025.06	CTM	Cross-Temporal Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning: A Manifold Mapping and Bayesian Diffusion Approach for Land Use Monitoring	CLIP	Transformer Decoder	N/A
2025.06	IHM-SNet	IHM-SNet: An Interactive Hierarchical Mamba-Based Screening Network for Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning	CLIP-ViT	Transformer Decoder	N/A
2025.07	MTI-CC	Cross-layer Attention Enhanced Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning via Mamba-Transformer Interaction	CLIP-ViT	Transformer Decoder	N/A
2025.08	CI-Net	Restricted supervised Cascade Information Network for remote sensing change captioning with serial sentences	Asymmetric Siamese Network	Cascade Linguistic Module	N/A
2025.08	SCCNet	SCCNet: Siamese Networks for Selective Change Captioning in Bi-Temporal Remote Sensing Images	ViT	Transformer Decoder	N/A
2025.08	--	Text-Augmented Semantic Feature Extraction and Difference Information Learning for Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning	FastSAM+CLIP	Transformer Decoder
2025.08	C3aptioner	C3aptioner: Improving Change Captioning by Leveraging Momentum Cross-view and Cross-modality Contrastive Learning	ResNet-101	Transformer Decoder	N/A
2025.08	ICL-CC	Scalable Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning using In-Context Learning

| ........

Multitask Learning of Change Detection and Change Captioning

Time	Model Name	Paper Title	Visual Encoder	Language Decoder	Code/Project
2024.01	Pix4Cap	Pixel-Level Change Detection Pseudo-Label Learning for Remote Sensing Change Captioning	ViT-B/32	Transformer Decoder	N/A
2024.03	Change-Agent	Change-Agent: Toward Interactive Comprehensive Remote Sensing Change Interpretation and Analysis	ViT-B/32	Transformer Decoder
2024.07	Semantic-CC	Semantic-CC: Boosting Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning via Foundational Knowledge and Semantic Guidance	SAM	Vicuna	N/A
2024.09	DetACC *	Detection Assisted Change Captioning for Remote Sensing Image	ResNet-101	Transformer Decoder	N/A
2024.09	KCFI	Enhancing Perception of Key Changes in Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning	ViT	Qwen
2024.10	MV-CC *	MV-CC: Mask Enhanced Video Model for Remote Sensing Change Caption	InternVideo2	Transformer Decoder
2024.10	ChangeMinds	ChangeMinds: Multi-task Framework for Detecting and Describing Changes in Remote Sensing	Swin Transformer	Transformer Decoder
2024.10	CTMTNet	A Multi-Task Network and Two Large Scale Datasets for Change Detection and Captioning in Remote Sensing Images	ResNet-101	Transformer Decoder	N/A
2024.12	Mask Approx Net	Mask Approximation Net: A Novel Diffusion Model Approach for Remote Sensing Change Captioning	ResNet	Transformer Decoder	Link
2025.01	MModalCC *	Robust Change Captioning in Remote Sensing: SECOND-CC Dataset and MModalCC Framework	ResNet-101	Transformer Decoder
2025.03	CD4C *	CD4C: Change Detection for Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning	ResNet-101	Transformer Decoder	N/A
2025.04	FST-Net	Frequency–Spatial–Temporal Domain Fusion Network for Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning	Segformer	Transformer Decoder	N/A
......

Change Question Answering

Time	Model Name	Paper Title	Visual Encoder	Language Decoder	Code/Project
2022.07	change-aware VQA	Change-Aware Visual Question Answering	CNN	RNN	N/A
2022.09	CDVQA-Net	Change Detection Meets Visual Question Answering	CNN	RNN
2024.09	ChangeChat	ChangeChat: An Interactive Model for Remote Sensing Change Analysis via Multimodal Instruction Tuning	CLIP-ViT	Vicuna-v1.5
2024.09	CDchat	CDChat: A Large Multimodal Model for Remote Sensing Change Description	CLIP ViT-L/14	Vicuna-v1.5
2024.10	TEOChat	TEOChat: A Large Vision-Language Assistant for Temporal Earth Observation Data	CLIP ViT-L/14	LLaMA-2
2024.10	GeoLLaVA	GeoLLaVA: Efficient Fine-Tuned Vision-Language Models for Temporal Change Detection in Remote Sensing	Video encoder	LLaVA-NeXT, Video-LLaVA
2024.10	VisTA	Show Me What and Where has Changed? Question Answering and Grounding for Remote Sensing Change Detection	CLIP image Encoder	CLIP Text Encoder
2024.12	RSUniVLM	RSUniVLM: A Unified Vision Language Model for Remote Sensing via Granularity-oriented Mixture of Experts	Siglip-400m	Qwen2-0.5B
2024.12	EarthDial	EarthDial: Turning Multi-sensory Earth Observations to Interactive Dialogues	InternViT-300M	Phi-3-mini
2024.12	UniRS	UniRS: Unifying Multi-temporal Remote Sensing Tasks through Vision Language Models	Siglip-400m	Sheared-LLAMA-3B
2025.05	DVLChat	DynamicVL: Benchmarking Multimodal Large Language Models for Dynamic City Understanding	SAM	Qwen2.5-VL	N/A
......

Text-driven Temporal Images Retrieval

Time	Model Name	Paper Title	Code/Project
2024.06	ChangeRetCap	Towards a multimodal framework for remote sensing image change retrieval and captioning
2025.01	text-ITSR	Self-Supervised Cross-Modal Text-Image Time Series Retrieval in Remote Sensing	N/A
........

Change Grounding

Time	Model Name	Grounding Output	Paper Title	Code/Project
2024.09	ChangeChat	mask	ChangeChat: An Interactive Model for Remote Sensing Change Analysis via Multimodal Instruction Tuning
2024.10	TEOChat	bbox	TEOChat: A Large Vision-Language Assistant for Temporal Earth Observation Data
2024.10	VisTA	mask	Show Me What and Where has Changed? Question Answering and Grounding for Remote Sensing Change Detection
2024.12	RSUniVLM	mask	RSUniVLM: A Unified Vision Language Model for Remote Sensing via Granularity-oriented Mixture of Experts
2024.12	EarthDial	bbox	EarthDial: Turning Multi-sensory Earth Observations to Interactive Dialogues
2025.03	Falcon	mask	Falcon: A Remote Sensing Vision-Language Foundation Model
2025.03	GeoRSMLLM	mask	GeoRSMLLM: A Multimodal Large Language Model for Vision-Language Tasks in Geoscience and Remote Sensing	N/A
........

Text-driven Temporal Images Generation

Time	Model Name	Paper Title	Code/Project
2025.02	TGIPG	Image Editing based on Diffusion Model for Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning	N/A
2025.04	ChangeDiff	ChangeDiff: A Multi-Temporal Change Detection Data Generator with Flexible Text Prompts via Diffusion Model
2025.07	--	Open-vocabulary generative vision-language models for creating a large-scale remote sensing change detection dataset	Link
2025.07	ChangeBridge	ChangeBridge: Spatiotemporal Image Generation with Multimodal Controls for Remote Sensing	N/A
........

👨‍🏫 Large Language Models Meets Temporal Images

LLM-driven Task-Specific Spatio-Temporal VLMs

Time	Method	Paper Title	LLM	LLM	Fine-tuning	Code/Project
2023.10	PromptCC	A Decoupling Paradigm with Prompt Learning for Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning	CLIP-ViT-B/32	GPT-2	Prompt Tuning
2024.06	ChangeExp	Towards Temporal Change Explanations from Bi-Temporal Satellite Images	CLIP-ViT-L	LLaVA-1.5	Prompt Method	N/A
2024.07	Semantic-CC	Semantic-CC: Boosting Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning via Foundational Knowledge and Semantic Guidance	SAM	Vicuna	LoRA	N/A
2024.09	KCFI	Enhancing Perception of Key Changes in Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning	ViT	Qwen	Prompt Tuning
2024.09	CDChat	CDChat: A Large Multimodal Model for Remote Sensing Change Description	CLIP-ViT-L/14	Vicuna-v1.5	LoRA
2024.10	GeoLLaVA	GeoLLaVA: Efficient Fine-Tuned Vision-Language Models for Temporal Change Detection in Remote Sensing	Siglip-400m	LLaVA-NeXT	LoRA
2024.10	Chareption	Chareption: Change-Aware Adaption Empowers Large Language Model for Effective Remote Sensing Image Change Captioning	CLIP-ViT-L/14	LLaMA-7B	Adapter	N/A
2024.11	CCExpert	CCExpert: Advancing MLLM Capability in Remote Sensing Change Captioning with Difference-Aware Integration and a Foundational Dataset	Siglip-400m	Qwen-2	LoRA
........

Unified Spatio-Temporal Vision-Language Foundation Models

Time	Method	Paper Title	Visual Encoder	LLM	Fine-tuning	Code/Project
2024.03	Change-Agent	Change-Agent: Toward Interactive Comprehensive Remote Sensing Change Interpretation and Analysis	Segformer	Chatgpt	Frozen
2024.09	ChangeChat	ChangeChat: An Interactive Model for Remote Sensing Change Analysis via Multimodal Instruction Tuning	CLIP-ViT	Vicuna-v1.5	LoRA
2024.10	TEOChat	TEOChat: A Large Vision-Language Assistant for Temporal Earth Observation Data	CLIP ViT-L/14	LLaMA-2	LoRA
2024.12	RingMoGPT	RingMoGPT: A Unified Remote Sensing Foundation Model for Vision, Language, and grounded tasks	ViT-g/14(EVA-CLIP)	Vicuna-13B	Frozen	N/A
2024.12	RSUniVLM	RSUniVLM: A Unified Vision Language Model for Remote Sensing via Granularity-oriented Mixture of Experts	Siglip-400m	Qwen2-0.5B	MoE
2024.12	EarthDial	EarthDial: Turning Multi-sensory Earth Observations to Interactive Dialogues	InternViT-300M	Phi-3-mini	Fully Fine-tuning
2024.12	UniRS	UniRS: Unifying Multi-temporal Remote Sensing Tasks through Vision Language Models	Siglip-400m	Sheared-LLAMA-3B	Fully Fine-tuning
2025.03	Falcon	Falcon: A Remote Sensing Vision-Language Foundation Model	DaViT	Florence-2	Fully Fine-tuning
2025.03	GeoRSMLLM	GeoRSMLLM: A Multimodal Large Language Model for Vision-Language Tasks in Geoscience and Remote Sensing	SigLIP	Qwen2-7B	N/A	N/A
2025.05	DVLChat	DynamicVL: Benchmarking Multimodal Large Language Models for Dynamic City Understanding	SAM	Qwen2.5-VL	LoRA	N/A
........

LLM-driven Remote Sensing Vision-Language Agents

Time	Method	Paper Title	Function	Code
2024.01	RSChatgpt	Remote Sensing ChatGPT: Solving Remote Sensing Tasks with ChatGPT and Visual Models	Single-image analysis
2024.03	Change-Agent	Change-Agent: Toward Interactive Comprehensive Remote Sensing Change Interpretation and Analysis	Spatio-Temporal Change Interpretation
2024.06	RS-Agent	RS-Agent: Automating Remote Sensing Tasks through Intelligent Agent	Tool selection and knowledge search	Link
2024.07	RS-AGENT	RS-AGENT: Large Language Models Guided Agent System for Remote Sensing Image Generation	Image Generation	N/A
2024.12	GeoTool-GPT	GeoTool-GPT: a trainable method for facilitating Large Language Models to master GIS tools	Master GIS tools	N/A
2025.01	RescueADI	RescueADI: Adaptive Disaster Interpretation in Remote Sensing Images With Autonomous Agents	Disaster Interpretation	N/A
........

🛰️ Dataset

Matching Temporal Images, Text, and Masks

Dataset	Time	Image Size	Image Resolution	Image Pairs	Captions*	Masks	Temporal Image Data Source	Anno.	Link
DUBAI CCD	2022.08	50×50	30m	500	2,500	-	Landsat-7 imagery	Manual	Link
LEVIR CCD	2022.08	256×256	0.5m	500	2,500	-	LEVIR-CD	Manual	Link
LEVIR-CC	2022.11	256×256	0.5m	10,077	50,385	-	LEVIR-CD	Manual	Link
CCExpert	2024.11	-	-	200K	1.2M	-	LEVIR-CC, CLVER-Change, ImageEdit, Spot-the-dif, STVchrono, Vismin, ChangeSim, SYSU-CD, SECOND	Auto.	Link
SECTION	2025.07	256×256	0.3-3m	4,059	12,200	-	SECOND	Manual	Link
LEVIR-MCI	2024.03	256×256	0.5m	10,077	50,385	building, road	LEVIR-CC	Manual	Link
LEVIR-CDC	2024.11	256×256	0.5m	10,077	50,385	building	LEVIR-CC	Manual	Link
WHU-CDC	2024.11	256×256	0.075m	7,434	37,170	building	WHU-CD	Manual	Link
SECOND-CC	2025.01	256×256	0.3∼3m	6,041	30,205	6 classes	SECOND	Manual	Link

Matching Temporal Images, Instruction and Response

Dataset	Time	Instruction Samples	Number of Images	Temporal Length	Temporal Image Data Source	Anno.	Link
CDVQA	2022.09	122,000	2,968	2	SECOND	Manual	Link
ChangeChat-87k	2024.09	87,195	10,077	2	LEVIR-CC, LEVIR-MCI	Auto.	Link
QAG-360K	2024.10	360,000	6,810	2	Hi-UCD, SECOND, LEVIR-CD	Auto.	Link
GeoLLaVA	2024.10	100,000	100,000	2	fMoW	Auto.	Link
TEOChatlas	2024.10	554,071	-	1~8	xBD, S2Looking, QFabric, fMoW	Auto.	Link
EarthDial	2024.12	11.11 Million	-	1~4	fMoW, TreeSatAI-Time-Series, MUDS, xBD, QuakeSet	Manual & Auto.	Link
UniRS	2024.12	318.8 K	-	1~T (T>2)	LEVIR-CC, ERA-Video	Auto.	Link
Falcon_SFT	2025.03	78 Million	5.6 Million	1~2	CDD, EGY-BCD, HRSCD, LEVIR-CD, MSBC, MSOSCD, NJDS, S2Looking, SYSU-CD, WHU-CD	Auto.	Link
DVL-Suite	2025.05	69,926	15,063	6.9 (Average)	U.S. National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP)	Manual & Auto.	N/A
....

💻 Others

Some CLIP Models in Remote Sensing

Time	Model Name	Paper Title	Code/Project
2023.06	RemoteCLIP	RemoteCLIP: A Vision Language Foundation Model for Remote Sensing	Link
2023.06	GeoRSCLIP	RS5M and GeoRSCLIP: A Large-Scale Vision- Language Dataset and a Large Vision-Language Model for Remote Sensing	Link
2023.12	SkyCLIP	SkyScript: a large and semantically diverse vision-language dataset for remote sensing	Link
2025.01	Git-RSCLIP	Text2Earth: Unlocking text-driven remote sensing image generation with a global-scale dataset and a foundation model	Link

🖊️ Citation

If you find our survey and repository useful for your research, please consider citing our paper:

@ARTICLE{liu2024RSSTVLMsurvey,
  author={Liu, Chenyang and Zhang, Jiafan and Chen, Keyan and Wang, Man and Zou, Zhengxia and Shi, Zhenwei},
  journal={IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine}, 
  title={Remote Sensing Spatiotemporal Vision–Language Models: A comprehensive survey}, 
  year={2025},
  volume={},
  number={},
  pages={2-42},
  doi={10.1109/MGRS.2025.3598283}}

🐲 Contact

liuchenyang@buaa.edu.cn