Quantum Machine Learning (QML) has emerged as an active area of research, yet its practical readiness for real-world geospatial applications remains uncertain due to constraints related to data availability, preprocessing requirements, and current quantum hardware limitations. This study evaluates the feasibility and behaviour of quantum kernel-based learning models within a realistic GIS workflow, using land suitability analysis for reforestation in the Mumbai metropolitan region as a representative case study although demonstrated using the Mumbai metropolitan region as a case study, the proposed GIS-driven preprocessing pipeline and quantum kernel evaluation framework are transferable to other regions with comparable remote-sensing data availability and environmental indicators. A geospatial dataset is constructed from satellite-derived environmental variables, including Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), annual rainfall, terrain slope, soil pH, and soil organic carbon, with suitability labels assigned using ecologically motivated rule-based thresholds that serve as heuristic ground truth. The dataset is processed through a standardized pipeline involving feature scaling, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), stratified train–test splitting, and Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE) to address class imbalance. Quantum Support Vector Machines (QSVMs) employing Pauli and ZZ feature maps are implemented using Qiskit and evaluated under noiseless simulation conditions, with performance compared against a classical Support Vector Machine baseline using identical preprocessing and evaluation metrics. While classical models achieve superior computational efficiency and higher predictive performance, QSVMs exhibit non-trivial classification behaviour on small, structured datasets when appropriate preprocessing and feature-to-qubit alignment are applied. Rather than claiming quantum advantage, this work provides an empirical assessment of the current capabilities and limitations of QML in applied geospatial analysis, positioning quantum kernel methods as complementary tools for exploratory environmental modelling under present technological constraints.
Quantum Machine Learning (QML) has emerged as an active area of research, yet its practical readiness for real-world geospatial applications remains uncertain due to constraints related to data availability, preprocessing requirements, and current quantum hardware limitations. This study evaluates the feasibility and behaviour of quantum kernel-based learning models within a realistic GIS workflow, using land suitability analysis for reforestation in the Mumbai metropolitan region as a representative case study although demonstrated using the Mumbai metropolitan region as a case study, the proposed GIS-driven preprocessing pipeline and quantum kernel evaluation framework are transferable to other regions with comparable remote-sensing data availability and environmental indicators. A geospatial dataset is constructed from satellite-derived environmental variables, including Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), annual rainfall, terrain slope, soil pH, and soil organic carbon, with suitability labels assigned using ecologically motivated rule-based thresholds that serve as heuristic ground truth. The dataset is processed through a standardized pipeline involving feature scaling, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), stratified train–test splitting, and Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE) to address class imbalance. Quantum Support Vector Machines (QSVMs) employing Pauli and ZZ feature maps are implemented using Qiskit and evaluated under noiseless simulation conditions, with performance compared against a classical Support Vector Machine baseline using identical preprocessing and evaluation metrics. While classical models achieve superior computational efficiency and higher predictive performance, QSVMs exhibit non-trivial classification behaviour on small, structured datasets when appropriate preprocessing and feature-to-qubit alignment are applied. Rather than claiming quantum advantage, this work provides an empirical assessment of the current capabilities and limitations of QML in applied geospatial analysis, positioning quantum kernel methods as complementary tools for exploratory environmental modelling under present technological constraints.
Abstract This work investigates the feasibility of using quantum machine learning for reforestation-suitability classification in the Mumbai region by integrating Quantum Support Vector Machines (QSVMs) with a GIS-based preprocessing pipeline. Satellite-derived indicators---NDVI, rainfall, slope, soil pH, and soil organic carbon---are extracted from Google Earth Engine and labeled using rule-based ecological thresholds. The resulting dataset is standardized, scaled to [−1,1], balanced with SMOTE, and compressed using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to align the feature dimension with the number of qubits. Two quantum kernel models, based on Pauli and ZZ feature maps, are implemented in Qiskit and evaluated against classical SVM baselines under identical preprocessing conditions. On the balanced dataset, the classical SVM achieves an accuracy of approximately 98\%, while Pauli- and ZZ-based QSVMs obtain 89\% and 77\% accuracy, respectively. These results indicate that, although quantum models do not surpass classical SVMs in this setting, well-designed quantum kernels can achieve competitive performance on small, structured geospatial datasets. The study positions QSVMs as complementary tools rather than replacements for classical models and highlights the importance of scaling, class balancing, and PCA--qubit alignment for stable quantum behavior in environmental analytics.
This research presents a hybrid variational quantum machine learning framework for real-world soil condition prediction using hyperspectral and environmental data. The study integrates classical preprocessing techniques with a Variational Quantum Classifier (VQC) implemented using Qiskit to classify soil moisture conditions into dry and wet states. A real soil moisture dataset containing environmental and spectral features was utilized to evaluate the model’s performance. Data normalization and feature encoding were applied before embedding the features into a parameterized quantum circuit composed of a ZZFeatureMap and TwoLocal ansatz. Model optimization was performed using the COBYLA optimizer within a simulator-based quantum backend. The system demonstrates the feasibility of applying near-term quantum machine learning techniques to agricultural analytics. Performance evaluation includes confusion matrix analysis, accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score metrics. The study further discusses scalability considerations, simulator-based execution constraints, and the implications of deploying the approach on real quantum hardware. This work contributes to the intersection of quantum computing, precision agriculture, and hyperspectral data analytics, highlighting the potential of hybrid quantum-classical workflows for next-generation intelligent farming systems.
Accurate soil nutrient estimation underpins fertility assessment, precision agriculture, and sustainable land management, yet conventional laboratory analysis is slow, costly, and impractical at scale. Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) captures detailed spectral signatures linked to soil properties, but its high dimensionality and limited ground truth samples strain classical machine learning. This review examines quantum machine learning (QML) as an emerging rather than established direction for high-dimensional, low-sample hyperspectral soil analysis. We outline where classical machine learning and deep learning fall short and then assess how quantum kernel methods, variational quantum circuits, and hybrid quantum–classical architectures might improve feature representation and nonlinear modeling. Of the 150 studies reviewed, 26 report quantum machine learning results of any kind, five use soil data, and only one evaluates soil spectra directly for nutrient or property estimation. The remainder contribute transferable evidence from adjacent soil and remote sensing tasks, together with soil applications that remain proposals. Accordingly, the review weighs both the promise and the practical constraints of QML on current noisy intermediate-scale quantum hardware, including the encoding cost, measurement overhead, circuit depth, and trainability limits. Future research priorities are identified: quantum-ready hyperspectral soil datasets, reproducible benchmarking against well-tuned classical baselines, scalable hybrid pipelines, hardware-aware reporting, and field validation. Pairing QML with hyperspectral soil sensing may eventually support soil fertility assessment, variable-rate fertilization, and sustainable precision agriculture, but any such benefit must be demonstrated experimentally rather than inferred and will depend on continued progress in quantum hardware.
Recently, there has been growing attention on combining quantum machine learning (QML) with classical deep learning approaches as computational techniques are key to improving the performance of image classification tasks.This study presents a hybrid approach that uses ResNet-50 (Residual Network) for feature extraction and Quantum Support Vector Machines (QSVM) for classification in the context of potato disease detection. Classical machine learning as well as deep learning models often struggle with high-dimensional and complex datasets necessitating advanced techniques like quantum computing to improve classification efficiency.In our research, we use ResNet-50 to extract deep feature representations from RGB images of potato diseases. These features are then subjected to dimensionality reduction using PCA (Principal Component Analysis). The resulting features are processed through QSVM models which apply various quantum feature maps—such as ZZ, Z and Pauli-X to transform classical data into quantum states. To assess the model’s performance we compared it with classical ML such as Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Random Forest (RF) using 5-fold stratified cross-validation for a comprehensive evaluation. The experimental results demonstrate that the Z-feature map-based QSVM outperforms classical models achieving an accuracy of 99.23% surpassing both SVM and RF models.This research highlights the advantages of integrating quantum computing into image classification and also provides disease detection solution into the potential of hybrid quantum-classical model.
Quantum Machine Learning (QML) has emerged as a promising paradigm for addressing increasing computational and representational demands in materials informatics. While classical models such as Support Vector Machines (SVM) achieve strong predictive performance, they often struggle to capture complex, highly correlated interactions in high-dimensional materials data. QML addresses this challenge by leveraging quantum-mechanical principles to construct expressive feature embeddings, where prospective quantum advantage lies in generating feature spaces that are difficult to approximate classically. In this study, 1,000 crystalline compounds from the Open Quantum Materials Database (OQMD) are evaluated in a binary classification task based on formation-energy stability. The dataset is normalized, reduced to four dimensions via Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and encoded into quantum circuits. Three QML models—QSVM, VQC, and QNN—are benchmarked against a classical SVM using repeated stratified evaluation. Results show that the classical SVM achieves the highest accuracy (91.8% ± 0.012), followed by QSVM (60.8% ± 0.035), while VQC and QNN perform significantly worse. This gap is driven by limited qubit capacity, encoding inefficiencies, restricted circuit expressivity, and optimization challenges. Nevertheless, QSVM demonstrates stable performance, suggesting that potential quantum advantage may emerge from improved feature encoding and kernel design rather than deeper variational circuits.
Purpose This study investigates the integration of quantum-enhanced machine learning (QML) into medical image analysis, focusing on classification and feature extraction tasks. It aims to evaluate whether hybrid quantum-classical models can overcome the limitations of traditional machine learning in handling high-dimensional, clinically relevant imaging data. Design/methodology/approach Hybrid architectures combining classical preprocessing with quantum components, specifically variational quantum circuits (VQCs) and quantum kernel methods, were developed and implemented in simulated quantum environments using Qiskit and PennyLane on Google Colab. Publicly available datasets (ChestX-ray14, Brain Tumor MRI and CT Hemorrhage) were preprocessed and encoded into quantum states. Model performance was evaluated against classical baselines (MLP and CNN) using accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, convergence speed and trainable parameters. Findings Quantum-enhanced models achieved competitive or superior performance compared to classical models with significantly fewer trainable parameters and faster convergence. The Quantum Kernel SVM demonstrated the highest precision (89.1%) and F1-score (88.5%) using only 8 parameters, while VQC models converged up to 2× faster than classical baselines. These results highlight the potential of QML to improve efficiency, robustness and scalability in diagnostic imaging workflows, particularly in resource-constrained or data-limited settings. Research limitations/implications The study relies on simulated quantum environments, which do not capture hardware noise or qubit limitations. Future work will extend to real quantum devices, multimodal data integration and interpretability strategies. Practical implications Quantum kernel methods and lightweight VQC architectures enable faster, resource-efficient diagnostic modeling, making them suitable for clinical environments with limited computational capacity or time-sensitive decision-making needs. Social implications Improving the efficiency and accessibility of medical image analysis has the potential to support faster diagnosis and enhance healthcare delivery, particularly in underserved or resource-limited regions. Originality/value This study provides a practical evaluation of hybrid quantum-classical models applied to multiple real medical imaging datasets in a reproducible simulated environment. It offers an early-stage framework demonstrating how QML techniques can be integrated into existing machine learning pipelines for medical image analysis.