aiqbench analysis
CausalPOI addresses the cold-start forecasting challenge for Points of Interest by shifting from correlation-based proximity graphs to a causal framework that models functional dependencies and urban interventions. By constructing treatment and control graphs to simulate counterfactual scenarios, the method offers improved interpretability and robustness over standard spatio-temporal baselines. This approach provides a more actionable foundation for data-driven urban planning and commercial decision-making in dynamic environments.
CausalPOI: Spatio-Temporal Graph-Based Causal Modeling for Cold-Start POI Check-in Forecasting
arXiv:2606.05413v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: As urban environments continue to evolve rapidly, accurately modeling the dynamic behaviour of Points of Interest is essential for supporting data-driven urban planning and commercial decision-making. While recent advancements in spatio-temporal graph learning have improved POI forecasting, most methods rely on proximity-based graphs and correlation-driven modeling, which overlook the functional dependencies between POIs and fail to capture the causal effects of urban interventions. In this paper, we introduce a novel research problem -- cold-start POI check-in forecasting, which aims to predict the future check-in pattern of a newly introduced POI, by modeling its temporal evolution and functional interactions with nearby POIs in a structured urban spatial context. To address these challenges, we propose CausalPOI, a spatio-temporal graph-based causal representation learning framework. CausalPOI leverages Spatio-Temporal Functional Interaction Graph to model semantic and spatial relationships between POIs, and constructs structurally aligned treatment and control graphs to simulate factual and counterfactual scenarios. Extensive experiments on real-world SafeGraph datasets demonstrate that CausalPOI significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines across the board, validating its effectiveness in spatio-temporal forecasting, semantic interaction modeling, and causal effect estimation, providing a more interpretable and actionable foundation for urban intervention analysis. Source code is available at Github.
Abstract:As urban environments continue to evolve rapidly, accurately modeling the dynamic behaviour of Points of Interest is essential for supporting data-driven urban planning and commercial decision-making. While recent advancements in spatio-temporal graph learning have improved POI forecasting, most methods rely on proximity-based graphs and correlation-driven modeling, which overlook the functional dependencies between POIs and fail to capture the causal effects of urban interventions. In this paper, we introduce a novel research problem -- cold-start POI check-in forecasting, which aims to predict the future check-in pattern of a newly introduced POI, by modeling its temporal evolution and functional interactions with nearby POIs in a structured urban spatial context. To address these challenges, we propose CausalPOI, a spatio-temporal graph-based causal representation learning framework. CausalPOI leverages Spatio-Temporal Functional Interaction Graph to model semantic and spatial relationships between POIs, and constructs structurally aligned treatment and control graphs to simulate factual and counterfactual scenarios. Extensive experiments on real-world SafeGraph datasets demonstrate that CausalPOI significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines across the board, validating its effectiveness in spatio-temporal forecasting, semantic interaction modeling, and causal effect estimation, providing a more interpretable and actionable foundation for urban intervention analysis. Source code is available at Github.
Machine Learning (cs.LG); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
arXiv:2606.05413 [cs.LG]
(or arXiv:2606.05413v1 [cs.LG] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.05413 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
https://doi.org/10.1145/3770855.3817641 Focus to learn more DOI(s) linking to related resources
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