YOLOv11-MDD: YOLOv11 in an Encoder–Decoder Architecture for Multi-Label Post-Wildfire Damage Detection—A Case Study of the 2023 US and Canada Wildfires

Natural disasters occur worldwide and cause significant financial and human losses. Wildfires are among the most important natural disasters, occurring more frequently in recent years due to global warming. Fast and accurate post-disaster damage detection could play an essential role in swift rescue planning and operations. Remote sensing (RS) data is an important source for tracking damage detection. Deep learning (DL) methods, as efficient tools, can extract valuable information from RS data to generate an accurate damage map for future operations. The present study proposes an encoder–decoder architecture composed of pre-trained Yolov11 blocks as the encoder path and Modified UNet (MUNet) blocks as the decoder path. The proposed network includes three main steps: (1) pre-processing, (2) network training, (3) prediction multilabel damage map and accuracy evaluation. To evaluate the network’s performance, the US and Canada datasets were considered. The datasets are satellite images of the 2023 wildfires in the US and Canada. The proposed method reaches the Overall Accuracy (OA) of 97.36, 97.47, and Kappa Coefficient (KC) of 0.96, 0.87 for the US and Canada 2023 wildfire datasets, respectively. Regarding the high OA and KC, an accurate final burnt map can be generated to assist in rescue and recovery efforts after the wildfire. The proposed YOLOv11–MUNet framework introduces an efficient and accurate post-event-only approach for wildfire damage detection. By overcoming the dependency on pre-event imagery and reducing model complexity, this method enhances the applicability of DL in rapid post-disaster assessment and management.