The DLOD&MCCA Framework for Accurate Mapping of Reservoir Dams in Arid Regions from Remote Sensing Imagery: A Multimodal Fusion and Constraint Approach

Accurate reservoir dam detection in arid regions is challenging because of spectral similarity between dams and surrounding backgrounds, indistinct boundaries, and substantial target-scale variation. To address these issues, this study proposes a deep learning object detection with multi-conditional constraint assistance (DLOD&MCCA) framework that combines a dual deep enhancement YOLO network (DDE-YOLO) with a multi-conditional constraint assistance (MCCA) strategy. In DDE-YOLO, visible (VIS) and near-infrared (NIR) imagery are fused to enhance cross-spectral discrimination, while task-oriented architectural refinements improve the representation of dam targets with diverse scales and structural characteristics. Meanwhile, the MCCA strategy constrains the search space to geographically plausible candidate regions, thereby reducing background interference and improving detection efficiency. Experiments conducted on the self-constructed S2-Dam dataset and the public DIOR dataset show that DDE-YOLO achieves mAP50 values of 92.8% and 76.2%, respectively, outperforming existing state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods. Furthermore, regional-scale dam mapping in Xinjiang achieved an accuracy of over 95%, demonstrating the effectiveness and practical applicability of the proposed framework for large-scale reservoir dam detection in arid environments.