How Certain are Uncertainty Estimates? Three Novel Earth Observation Datasets for Benchmarking Uncertainty Quantification in Machine Learning

Abstract

Uncertainty quantification (UQ) is essential for assessing the reliability of Earth observation (EO) products. However, the extensive use of machine learning models in EO introduces an additional layer of complexity, as those models themselves are inherently uncertain. While various UQ methods do exist for machine learning models, their performance on EO datasets remains largely unevaluated. A key challenge in the community is the absence of the ground truth for uncertainty, i.e. how certain the uncertainty estimates are, apart from the labels for the image/signal. This article fills this gap by introducing three benchmark datasets specifically designed for UQ in EO machine learning models. These datasets address three common problem types in EO: regression, image segmentation, and scene classification. They enable a transparent comparison of different UQ methods for EO machine learning models. We describe the creation and characteristics of each dataset, including data sources, preprocessing steps, and label generation, with a particular focus on calculating the reference uncertainty. We also showcase baseline performance of several machine learning models on each dataset, highlighting the utility of these benchmarks for model development and comparison. Overall, this article offers a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners working in artificial intelligence for EO, promoting a more accurate and reliable quality measure of the outputs of machine learning models. The dataset and code are accessible via https://gitlab.lrz.de/ai4eo/WG_Uncertainty.