Interactive Visualization and Representation Analysis Applied to Glacier Segmentation

Abstract

Interpretability has attracted increasing attention in earth observation problems. We apply interactive visualization and representation analysis to guide the interpretation of glacier segmentation models. We visualize the activations from a U-Net to understand and evaluate the model performance. We built an online interface using the Shiny R package to provide comprehensive error analysis of the predictions. Users can interact with the panels and discover model failure modes. We illustrate an example of how our interface could help guide decisions for improving model performance. Further, we discuss how visualization can provide sanity checks during data preprocessing and model training. By closely examining the problem of glacier segmentation, we are able to discuss how visualization strategies can support the modeling process and the interpretation of prediction results from geospatial deep learning.