Mask-to-Height: A YOLOv11-Based Architecture for Joint Building Instance
  Segmentation and Height Classification from Satellite Imagery
Authors: name: Mahmoud El Hussieni; name: Bahadır K. Güntürk; name: Hasan F. Ateş; name: Oğuz Hanoğlu
Published: 2025-10-31 06:37:08

Abstract: Accurate building instance segmentation and height classification are
critical for urban planning, 3D city modeling, and infrastructure monitoring.
This paper presents a detailed analysis of YOLOv11, the recent advancement in
the YOLO series of deep learning models, focusing on its application to joint
building extraction and discrete height classification from satellite imagery.
YOLOv11 builds on the strengths of earlier YOLO models by introducing a more
efficient architecture that better combines features at different scales,
improves object localization accuracy, and enhances performance in complex
urban scenes. Using the DFC2023 Track 2 dataset -- which includes over 125,000
annotated buildings across 12 cities -- we evaluate YOLOv11's performance using
metrics such as precision, recall, F1 score, and mean average precision (mAP).
Our findings demonstrate that YOLOv11 achieves strong instance segmentation
performance with 60.4\% mAP@50 and 38.3\% mAP@50--95 while maintaining robust
classification accuracy across five predefined height tiers. The model excels
in handling occlusions, complex building shapes, and class imbalance,
particularly for rare high-rise structures. Comparative analysis confirms that
YOLOv11 outperforms earlier multitask frameworks in both detection accuracy and
inference speed, making it well-suited for real-time, large-scale urban
mapping. This research highlights YOLOv11's potential to advance semantic urban
reconstruction through streamlined categorical height modeling, offering
actionable insights for future developments in remote sensing and geospatial
intelligence.