deep learning, remote sensing image scene understanding (RSISU), remote sensing image scene classification, remote sensing image scene retrieval, remote sensing image object detection, Technology, Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General), TA1-2040, Biology (General), QH301-705.5, Physics, QC1-999, Chemistry, QD1-999

As a fundamental and important task in remote sensing, remote sensing image scene understanding (RSISU) has attracted tremendous research interest in recent years. RSISU includes the following sub-tasks: remote sensing image scene classification, remote sensing image scene retrieval, and scene-driven remote sensing image object detection. Although these sub-tasks have different goals, they share some communal hints. Hence, this paper tries to discuss them as a whole. Similar to other domains (e.g., speech recognition and natural image recognition), deep learning has also become the state-of-the-art technique in RSISU. To facilitate the sustainable progress of RSISU, this paper presents a comprehensive review of deep-learning-based RSISU methods, and points out some future research directions and potential applications of RSISU.