A Training-Free Paradigm for Data-Scarce Maritime Scene Classification Using Vision-Language Models

Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) relies heavily on data acquired from high-resolution optical spaceborne sensors; however, processing this massive quantity of sensor data via traditional supervised deep learning is severely bottlenecked by its dependency on exhaustively annotated datasets. Under extreme data scarcity, conventional architectures suffer severe performance degradation, rendering them impractical for time-critical, zero-day deployments. To overcome this barrier, we propose a training-free inference paradigm that leverages the extensive pre-trained knowledge of Large Vision-Language Models (VLMs). Specifically, we introduce a Domain Knowledge-Enhanced In-Context Learning (DK-ICL) framework coupled with a Macro-Topological Chain-of-Thought (MT-CoT) strategy. This approach bridges the perspective gap between natural images and top–down optical sensor imagery by translating expert remote sensing heuristics into a strict, step-by-step reasoning pipeline. Extensive evaluations demonstrate the substantial efficacy of this framework. Armed with merely 4 visual exemplars per category as in-context triggers, our MT-CoT augmented VLMs outperform traditional models trained under identical scarcity by over 38% in F1-score. Crucially, real-world case studies confirm that this zero-gradient approach maintains robust generalization on unannotated, out-of-distribution coastal clutters, achieving performance parity with data-heavy networks trained on 50 times the data volume. By substituting massive human annotation and GPU optimization with scalable logical deduction, this paradigm establishes a resource-efficient foundation for next-generation intelligent maritime sensing networks.