Ricardo da Silva Torres

Alan Gomes, Anderson Gonçalves, Samuel Felipe dos Santos et al.

Plant phenology-the study of recurrent life cycle events-is essential for understanding ecosystem dynamics and their responses to climate change impacts. While Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and near-surface cameras enable high-resolution monitoring, identifying plant species across time remains computationally challenging. State-of-the-art approaches, specifically Multi-Temporal Convolutional Networks (CNNs), rely on rigid multi-branch architectures that scale poorly with longer time series and require large spatial context windows. In this paper, we present an extensive study on optimizing Vision Transformers (ViTs) for efficient spatio-temporal vegetation pixel classification. We conducted a comprehensive ablation study analyzing seven key design dimensions, including: (i) data normalization; (ii) spectral arrangement; (iii) boundary handling; (iv) spatial context window shape and size; (v) tokenization strategies; (vi) positional encoding; and (vii) feature aggregation strategies. Our method was evaluated on two datasets from the Brazilian Cerrado biome, Serra do Cipó (aerial imagery) and Itirapina (near-surface imagery). Experimental results demonstrate that our ViT approach offers a substantial improvement in computational efficiency while maintaining competitive classification performance. Notably, our ViT reduces Floating Point Operations (FLOPs) by an order of magnitude and maintains constant parameter complexity regardless of the time series length, whereas the CNN baseline scales linearly. Our findings confirm that ViTs are a robust, scalable solution for resource-constrained phenological monitoring systems.

Caio Vinicius Dadauto, Nelson Luis Saldanha da Fonseca, Ricardo da Silva Torres

Accurate modeling of realistic network topologies is essential for evaluating novel Internet solutions. Current topology generators, notably scale-free-based models, fail to capture multiple properties of intra-AS topologies. While scale-free networks encode node-degree distribution, they overlook crucial graph properties like betweenness, clustering, and assortativity. The limitations of existing generators pose challenges for training and evaluating deep learning models in communication networks, emphasizing the need for advanced topology generators encompassing diverse Internet topology characteristics. This paper introduces a novel deep-learning-based generator of synthetic graphs representing intra-autonomous in the Internet, named Deep-Generative Graphs for the Internet (DGGI). It also presents a novel massive dataset of real intra-AS graphs extracted from the project ITDK, called IGraphs. It is shown that DGGI creates synthetic graphs that accurately reproduce the properties of centrality, clustering, assortativity, and node degree. The DGGI generator overperforms existing Internet topology generators. On average, DGGI improves the MMD metric $84.4\%$, $95.1\%$, $97.9\%$, and $94.7\%$ for assortativity, betweenness, clustering, and node degree, respectively.

Mauricio Pamplona Segundo, Allan Pinto, Rodrigo Minetto et al.

This work introduces a novel solution to measure economic activity through remote sensing for a wide range of spatial areas. We hypothesized that disturbances in human behavior caused by major life-changing events leave signatures in satellite imagery that allows devising relevant image-based indicators to estimate their impacts and support decision-makers. We present a case study for the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, which imposed severe mobility restrictions and caused worldwide disruptions, using flying airplane detection around the 30 busiest airports in Europe to quantify and analyze the lockdown's effects and post-lockdown recovery. Our solution won the Rapid Action Coronavirus Earth observation (RACE) upscaling challenge, sponsored by the European Space Agency and the European Commission, and now integrates the RACE dashboard. This platform combines satellite data and artificial intelligence to promote a progressive and safe reopening of essential activities. Code and CNN models are available at https://github.com/maups/covid19-custom-script-contest

Leandro Stival, Ricardo da Silva Torres, Helio Pedrini

Satellites continuously generate massive volumes of data, particularly for Earth observation, including satellite image time series (SITS). However, most deep learning models are designed to process either entire images or complete time series sequences to extract meaningful features for downstream tasks. In this study, we propose a novel multimodal approach that leverages pixel-wise two-dimensional (2D) representations to encode visual property variations from SITS more effectively. Specifically, we generate recurrence plots from pixel-based vegetation index time series (NDVI, EVI, and SAVI) as an alternative to using raw pixel values, creating more informative representations. Additionally, we introduce PIxel-wise Multimodal Contrastive (PIMC), a new multimodal self-supervision approach that produces effective encoders based on two-dimensional pixel time series representations and remote sensing imagery (RSI). To validate our approach, we assess its performance on three downstream tasks: pixel-level forecasting and classification using the PASTIS dataset, and land cover classification on the EuroSAT dataset. Moreover, we compare our results to state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods on all downstream tasks. Our experimental results show that the use of 2D representations significantly enhances feature extraction from SITS, while contrastive learning improves the quality of representations for both pixel time series and RSI. These findings suggest that our multimodal method outperforms existing models in various Earth observation tasks, establishing it as a robust self-supervision framework for processing both SITS and RSI. Code avaliable on

R. Torres, D. J. Nott, S. A. Sisson et al.

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are highly flexible predictive models. However, reliably quantifying uncertainty for their predictions is a continuing challenge. There has been much recent work on "recalibration" of predictive distributions for ANNs, so that forecast probabilities for events of interest are consistent with certain frequency evaluations of them. Uncalibrated probabilistic forecasts are of limited use for many important decision-making tasks. To address this issue, we propose a localized recalibration of ANN predictive distributions using the dimension-reduced representation of the input provided by the ANN hidden layers. Our novel method draws inspiration from recalibration techniques used in the literature on approximate Bayesian computation and likelihood-free inference methods. Most existing calibration methods for ANNs can be thought of as calibrating either on the input layer, which is difficult when the input is high-dimensional, or the output layer, which may not be sufficiently flexible. Through a simulation study, we demonstrate that our method has good performance compared to alternative approaches, and explore the benefits that can be achieved by localizing the calibration based on different layers of the network. Finally, we apply our proposed method to a diamond price prediction problem, demonstrating the potential of our approach to improve prediction and uncertainty quantification in real-world applications.

Samuel G. Fadel, Sebastian Mair, Ricardo da S. Torres et al.

Generative models based on normalizing flows are very successful in modeling complex data distributions using simpler ones. However, straightforward linear interpolations show unexpected side effects, as interpolation paths lie outside the area where samples are observed. This is caused by the standard choice of Gaussian base distributions and can be seen in the norms of the interpolated samples as they are outside the data manifold. This observation suggests that changing the way of interpolating should generally result in better interpolations, but it is not clear how to do that in an unambiguous way. In this paper, we solve this issue by enforcing a specific manifold and, hence, change the base distribution, to allow for a principled way of interpolation. Specifically, we use the Dirichlet and von Mises-Fisher base distributions on the probability simplex and the hypersphere, respectively. Our experimental results show superior performance in terms of bits per dimension, Fréchet Inception Distance (FID), and Kernel Inception Distance (KID) scores for interpolation, while maintaining the generative performance.

Icaro Cavalcante Dourado, Salvatore Tabbone, Ricardo da Silva Torres

This paper proposes a learning model, based on rank-fusion graphs, for general applicability in multimodal prediction tasks, such as multimodal regression and image classification. Rank-fusion graphs encode information from multiple descriptors and retrieval models, thus being able to capture underlying relationships between modalities, samples, and the collection itself. The solution is based on the encoding of multiple ranks for a query (or test sample), defined according to different criteria, into a graph. Later, we project the generated graph into an induced vector space, creating fusion vectors, targeting broader generality and efficiency. A fusion vector estimator is then built to infer whether a multimodal input object refers to a class or not. Our method is capable of promoting a fusion model better than early-fusion and late-fusion alternatives. Performed experiments in the context of multiple multimodal and visual datasets, as well as several descriptors and retrieval models, demonstrate that our learning model is highly effective for different prediction scenarios involving visual, textual, and multimodal features, yielding better effectiveness than state-of-the-art methods.

Icaro Cavalcante Dourado, Ricardo da Silva Torres

The vast increase in amount and complexity of digital content led to a wide interest in ad-hoc retrieval systems in recent years. Complementary, the existence of heterogeneous data sources and retrieval models stimulated the proliferation of increasingly ingenious and effective rank aggregation functions. Although recently proposed rank aggregation functions are promising with respect to effectiveness, existing proposals in the area usually overlook efficiency aspects. We propose an innovative rank aggregation function that is unsupervised, intrinsically multimodal, and targeted for fast retrieval and top effectiveness performance. We introduce the concepts of embedding and indexing of graph-based rank-aggregation representation models, and their application for search tasks. Embedding formulations are also proposed for graph-based rank representations. We introduce the concept of fusion vectors, a late-fusion representation of objects based on ranks, from which an intrinsically rank-aggregation retrieval model is defined. Next, we present an approach for fast retrieval based on fusion vectors, thus promoting an efficient rank aggregation system. Our method presents top effectiveness performance among state-of-the-art related work, while bringing novel aspects of multimodality and effectiveness. Consistent speedups are achieved against the recent baselines in all datasets considered.

Keiller Nogueira, Jefersson A. dos Santos, Nathalia Menini et al.

Plant phenology studies rely on long-term monitoring of life cycles of plants. High-resolution unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and near-surface technologies have been used for plant monitoring, demanding the creation of methods capable of locating and identifying plant species through time and space. However, this is a challenging task given the high volume of data, the constant data missing from temporal dataset, the heterogeneity of temporal profiles, the variety of plant visual patterns, and the unclear definition of individuals' boundaries in plant communities. In this letter, we propose a novel method, suitable for phenological monitoring, based on Convolutional Networks (ConvNets) to perform spatio-temporal vegetation pixel-classification on high resolution images. We conducted a systematic evaluation using high-resolution vegetation image datasets associated with the Brazilian Cerrado biome. Experimental results show that the proposed approach is effective, overcoming other spatio-temporal pixel-classification strategies.

Icaro Cavalcante Dourado, Daniel Carlos Guimarães Pedronette, Ricardo da Silva Torres

This paper presents a robust and comprehensive graph-based rank aggregation approach, used to combine results of isolated ranker models in retrieval tasks. The method follows an unsupervised scheme, which is independent of how the isolated ranks are formulated. Our approach is able to combine arbitrary models, defined in terms of different ranking criteria, such as those based on textual, image or hybrid content representations. We reformulate the ad-hoc retrieval problem as a document retrieval based on fusion graphs, which we propose as a new unified representation model capable of merging multiple ranks and expressing inter-relationships of retrieval results automatically. By doing so, we claim that the retrieval system can benefit from learning the manifold structure of datasets, thus leading to more effective results. Another contribution is that our graph-based aggregation formulation, unlike existing approaches, allows for encapsulating contextual information encoded from multiple ranks, which can be directly used for ranking, without further computations and post-processing steps over the graphs. Based on the graphs, a novel similarity retrieval score is formulated using an efficient computation of minimum common subgraphs. Finally, another benefit over existing approaches is the absence of hyperparameters. A comprehensive experimental evaluation was conducted considering diverse well-known public datasets, composed of textual, image, and multimodal documents. Performed experiments demonstrate that our method reaches top performance, yielding better effectiveness scores than state-of-the-art baseline methods and promoting large gains over the rankers being fused, thus demonstrating the successful capability of the proposal in representing queries based on a unified graph-based model of rank fusions.

Samuel G. Fadel, Ricardo da S. Torres

Recent advances in employing neural networks on graph domains helped push the state of the art in link prediction tasks, particularly in recommendation services. However, the use of temporal contextual information, often modeled as dynamic graphs that encode the evolution of user-item relationships over time, has been overlooked in link prediction problems. In this paper, we consider the hypothesis that leveraging such information enables models to make better predictions, proposing a new neural network approach for this. Our experiments, performed on the widely used ML-100k and ML-1M datasets, show that our approach produces better predictions in scenarios where the pattern of user-item relationships change over time. In addition, they suggest that existing approaches are significantly impacted by those changes.

Érico M. Pereira, Ricardo da S. Torres, Jefersson A. dos Santos

Over the last decades, hand-crafted feature extractors have been used to encode image visual properties into feature vectors. Recently, data-driven feature learning approaches have been successfully explored as alternatives for producing more representative visual features. In this work, we combine both research venues, focusing on the color quantization problem. We propose two data-driven approaches to learn image representations through the search for optimized quantization schemes, which lead to more effective feature extraction algorithms and compact representations. Our strategy employs Genetic Algorithm, a soft-computing apparatus successfully utilized in Information-retrieval-related optimization problems. We hypothesize that changing the quantization affects the quality of image description approaches, leading to effective and efficient representations. We evaluate our approaches in content-based image retrieval tasks, considering eight well-known datasets with different visual properties. Results indicate that the approach focused on representation effectiveness outperformed baselines in all tested scenarios. The other approach, which also considers the size of created representations, produced competitive results keeping or even reducing the dimensionality of feature vectors up to 25%.

Keiller Nogueira, Samuel G. Fadel, Ícaro C. Dourado et al.

Flooding is the world's most costly type of natural disaster in terms of both economic losses and human causalities. A first and essential procedure towards flood monitoring is based on identifying the area most vulnerable to flooding, which gives authorities relevant regions to focus. In this work, we propose several methods to perform flooding identification in high-resolution remote sensing images using deep learning. Specifically, some proposed techniques are based upon unique networks, such as dilated and deconvolutional ones, while other was conceived to exploit diversity of distinct networks in order to extract the maximum performance of each classifier. Evaluation of the proposed algorithms were conducted in a high-resolution remote sensing dataset. Results show that the proposed algorithms outperformed several state-of-the-art baselines, providing improvements ranging from 1 to 4% in terms of the Jaccard Index.

Otávio A. B. Penatti, Sandra Avila, Eduardo Valle et al.

Visual dictionaries are a critical component for image classification/retrieval systems based on the bag-of-visual-words (BoVW) model. Dictionaries are usually learned without supervision from a training set of images sampled from the collection of interest. However, for large, general-purpose, dynamic image collections (e.g., the Web), obtaining a representative sample in terms of semantic concepts is not straightforward. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of semantics in the dictionary quality, aiming at verifying the importance of semantic diversity in relation visual diversity for visual dictionaries. In the experiments, we vary the amount of classes used for creating the dictionary and then compute different BoVW descriptors, using multiple codebook sizes and different coding and pooling methods (standard BoVW and Fisher Vectors). Results for image classification show that as visual dictionaries are based on low-level visual appearances, visual diversity is more important than semantic diversity. Our conclusions open the opportunity to alleviate the burden in generating visual dictionaries as we need only a visually diverse set of images instead of the whole collection to create a good dictionary.

George Teodoro, Eduardo Valle, Nathan Mariano et al.

Similarity search in high-dimentional spaces is a pivotal operation found a variety of database applications. Recently, there has been an increase interest in similarity search for online content-based multimedia services. Those services, however, introduce new challenges with respect to the very large volumes of data that have to be indexed/searched, and the need to minimize response times observed by the end-users. Additionally, those users dynamically interact with the systems creating fluctuating query request rates, requiring the search algorithm to adapt in order to better utilize the underline hardware to reduce response times. In order to address these challenges, we introduce hypercurves, a flexible framework for answering approximate k-nearest neighbor (kNN) queries for very large multimedia databases, aiming at online content-based multimedia services. Hypercurves executes on hybrid CPU--GPU environments, and is able to employ those devices cooperatively to support massive query request rates. In order to keep the response times optimal as the request rates vary, it employs a novel dynamic scheduler to partition the work between CPU and GPU. Hypercurves was throughly evaluated using a large database of multimedia descriptors. Its cooperative CPU--GPU execution achieved performance improvements of up to 30x when compared to the single CPU-core version. The dynamic work partition mechanism reduces the observed query response times in about 50% when compared to the best static CPU--GPU task partition configuration. In addition, Hypercurves achieves superlinear scalability in distributed (multi-node) executions, while keeping a high guarantee of equivalence with its sequential version --- thanks to the proof of probabilistic equivalence, which supported its aggressive parallelization design.

Otavio A. B. Penatti, Eduardo Valle, Ricardo da S. Torres

Mid-level features based on visual dictionaries are today a cornerstone of systems for classification and retrieval of images. Those state-of-the-art representations depend crucially on the choice of a codebook (visual dictionary), which is usually derived from the dataset. In general-purpose, dynamic image collections (e.g., the Web), one cannot have the entire collection in order to extract a representative dictionary. However, based on the hypothesis that the dictionary reflects only the diversity of low-level appearances and does not capture semantics, we argue that a dictionary based on a small subset of the data, or even on an entirely different dataset, is able to produce a good representation, provided that the chosen images span a diverse enough portion of the low-level feature space. Our experiments confirm that hypothesis, opening the opportunity to greatly alleviate the burden in generating the codebook, and confirming the feasibility of employing visual dictionaries in large-scale dynamic environments.