A transfer learning-based approach for automatic monument detection

Abstract

Architectural heritage connects us to the cultural achievements of past civilizations. Patan Durbar Square in Nepal is home to many such structures, yet identifying them remains a challenge for tourists. This paper presents an automated monument recognition system built on the backbone of convolutional neural networks (CNNs). A dataset of 1832 images of 9 important monuments from Patan was created, and build a detection system with MobileNetV2, a light-weight CNN, to detect monuments in Patan Durbar Square with a near-perfect F1 score of 98.94%. The approach utilizes transfer learning to adapt the model to local architectural styles. A detailed ablation study is performed to determine the optimal network design and augmentation strategies. Class-wise performance is further analyzed to verify robustness against visual occlusion and similarity. Finally, the model is deployed as a mobile application using Flutter and the FastAPI framework. This work demonstrates the viability of lightweight CNNs for real-time cultural heritage preservation.