IAES International Journal of Artificial Intelligence (IJ-AI)
Vol 15, No 4: August 2026

A transfer learning-based approach for automatic monument detection

Santosh Giri (Tribhuvan University)
Jebish Purbey (Tribhuvan University)
Sunil Adhikari (Tribhuvan University)
Paarit Pokharel (Tribhuvan University)
Babu R. Dawadi (Tribhuvan University)
Bipun Man Pati (Tribhuvan University)
Atsushi Ito (Chuo University)
Sushant Chalise (Tribhuvan University)
Sanjivan Satyal (Tribhuvan University)



Article Info

Publish Date
01 Aug 2026

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.

Copyrights © 2026






Journal Info

Abbrev

IJAI

Publisher

Subject

Computer Science & IT Engineering

Description

IAES International Journal of Artificial Intelligence (IJ-AI) publishes articles in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The scope covers all artificial intelligence area and its application in the following topics: neural networks; fuzzy logic; simulated biological evolution algorithms (like ...