Burned Area Detection with Sentinel-2A Data: Using Deep Learning Techniques with eXplainable Artificial Intelligence

Abstract. Annually, a considerable quantity of forest is burned on a global scale. Therefore, it is essential to obtain precise and fast information regarding the size of burned regions in order to effectively monitor the adverse consequences of wildfires. The objective of this investigation is to indicate the effectiveness and usefulness of a deep learning (DL) architecture, such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), in the mapping of areas affected by fire, employing an eXplainable artificial intelligence (XAI) algorithm known as SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) with accuracy evaluation criteria. Furthermore, this paper presents the evaluation of the Çanakkale-Kizilkeçili village wildfire. The research investigated the impacts of a variety of spectral indices, including the normalized burn index (NBR), differentiated normalized burn index (dNBR), Green-Red Vegetation Index (GRVI), simple ratio vegetation index (RVI), and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). At the end of the training process, the model achieved a training accuracy of approximately 0.99, with model loss values converging to approximately 0.1. The findings of the burned area identification analysis indicate that by incorporating spectral indices as supplementary information, the CNN model achieved a high level of accuracy, with an overall accuracy of 98.88% and a Kappa Coefficient of 0.98. Additionally, the SHAP technique was employed to gain insights into the output of the models. The feature importances of the spectral bands were determined through the SHAP analysis of the CNN model. Hence, the significance of the auxiliary data generated by the NBR, dNBR, and NDVI indices was identified as being the highest among the original bands and auxiliary data employed in this investigation.