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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">ISPRS Ann. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9050</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-annals-XI-3-2026-879-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Multi-Modal Attention for Automated Disaster Damage Assessment Using Remote Sensing Imagery and Deep Learning</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Gebre</surname>
<given-names>Tewodros Syum</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Talreja</surname>
<given-names>Jagrati</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Hashemi-Beni</surname>
<given-names>Leila</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Built Environment Department, College of Science and Technology, North Carolina A&amp;T State University, Greensboro, NC, USA</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, Richmond Hill, ON, Canada</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>09</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>XI-3-2026</volume>
<fpage>879</fpage>
<lpage>885</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Tewodros Syum Gebre et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-3-2026/879/2026/isprs-annals-XI-3-2026-879-2026.html">This article is available from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-3-2026/879/2026/isprs-annals-XI-3-2026-879-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-3-2026/879/2026/isprs-annals-XI-3-2026-879-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-3-2026/879/2026/isprs-annals-XI-3-2026-879-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Timely and accurate disaster damage assessment is crucial for effective emergency response, resource allocation, and recovery. Traditional methods, which often rely on manual inspections or sparse data, are typically slow and error-prone. This paper introduces a novel framework leveraging remote sensing imagery and deep learning to automate building damage classification. Using preand post-disaster satellite imagery, our model categorizes buildings into four damage levels: &amp;rdquo;no damage,&amp;rdquo; &amp;rdquo;minor damage,&amp;rdquo; &amp;rdquo;major damage,&amp;rdquo; and &amp;rdquo;destroyed.&amp;rdquo; The core innovation is a multi-modal attention mechanism that fuses bi-temporal features to explicitly detect and assess structural changes. We employ a lightweight ConvNeXT-Tiny backbone to ensure efficient processing without compromising performance. Key contributions include: (1) a cross-attention module for multi-modal data fusion, (2) an optimized preprocessing pipeline for large-scale datasets, and (3) robust data augmentation techniques. Experiments on a large-scale disaster dataset demonstrate an overall classification accuracy of 94.90%. The model effectively discriminates between damage categories and remains resilient to incomplete data. This system significantly improves assessment speed and accuracy, aiding emergency responders in prioritizing interventions. This work advances automated disaster damage detection by integrating multi-temporal imagery with deep learning, offering a scalable solution for real-time response.</p>
</abstract>
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