StreetviewLLM: Extracting Geographic Information Using a Chain-of-Thought Multimodal Large Language Model

Traditional machine learning has played a key role in geospatial predictions, but its limitations have become more distinct over time. One significant drawback of traditional ML is that they often rely on structured geospatial data, such as raster or vector formats, affecting their ability to handle unstructured or multimodal data (Pierdicca & Paolanti, 2022). Additionally, traditional models may face challenges in capturing complex spatial patterns and regional variations, leading to challenges with data sparsity and uneven distribution, which could affect the accuracy and generalizability of predictions (Nikparvar & Thill, 2021). In contrast, large language models (LLMs) have shown great promise across various fields by processing vast amounts of data and reasoning across multiple modalities (Chang et al., 2024). By integrating textual, visual, and contextual information, LLMs can introduce novel covariates for geospatial predictions, thus enhancing traditional approaches. However, extracting geospatial knowledge from LLMs poses its challenges. Although using geographic coordinates (i.e., latitude and longitude) was a straightforward way to retrieve location-specific information, this approach often yields suboptimal results, particularly when dealing with complex spatial relationships and regional characteristics. As a result, the traditional model does not easily to harness the full potential of multi-modal data, hindering its effectiveness in applications demanding comprehensive, cross-modal insights.