# GeoMAE: Masking Representation Learning for Spatio-Temporal Graph Forecasting with Missing Values

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.14083 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.14083/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 27 of its 46 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Aug 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 27 of 27)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [Masked Autoencoders Are Scalable Vision Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06377/) (2021)
- [Dropout as a Bayesian Approximation: Representing Model Uncertainty in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02142/) (2015)
- [Neural Ordinary Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.07366/) (2018)
- [Informer: Beyond Efficient Transformer for Long Sequence Time-Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.07436/) (2020)
- [TimesNet: Temporal 2D-Variation Modeling for General Time Series Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02186/) (2022)
- [Graph WaveNet for Deep Spatial-Temporal Graph Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.00121/) (2019)
- [CSDI: Conditional Score-based Diffusion Models for Probabilistic Time Series Imputation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03502/) (2021)
- [Recurrent Neural Networks for Multivariate Time Series with Missing Values](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.01865/) (2016)
- [Adaptive Graph Convolutional Recurrent Network for Traffic Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.02842/) (2020)
- [GAIN: Missing Data Imputation using Generative Adversarial Nets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.02920/) (2018)
- [Deep Spatio-Temporal Residual Networks for Citywide Crowd Flows Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.00081/) (2016)
- [BRITS: Bidirectional Recurrent Imputation for Time Series](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.10572/) (2018)
- [GP-VAE: Deep Probabilistic Time Series Imputation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.04155/) (2019)
- [Handling Incomplete Heterogeneous Data using VAEs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.03653/) (2018)
- [MisGAN: Learning from Incomplete Data with Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.09599/) (2019)
- [AirFormer: Predicting Nationwide Air Quality in China with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.15979/) (2022)
- [Bayesian CP Factorization of Incomplete Tensors with Automatic Rank Determination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1401.6497/) (2014)
- [ImputeFormer: Low Rankness-Induced Transformers for Generalizable Spatiotemporal Imputation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.01728/) (2023)
- [When Do Contrastive Learning Signals Help Spatio-Temporal Graph Forecasting?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.11873/) (2021)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks for Spatio-temporal Data: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.08903/) (2020)
- [GinAR: An End-To-End Multivariate Time Series Forecasting Model Suitable for Variable Missing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.11333/) (2024)
- [Merlin: Multi-View Representation Learning for Robust Multivariate Time Series Forecasting with Unfixed Missing Rates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.12459/) (2025)
- [SSD-TS: Exploring the Potential of Linear State Space Models for Diffusion Models in Time Series Imputation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13338/) (2024)
- [Domain Adaptation under Missingness Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.02093/) (2022)
- [Neural ODEs for Informative Missingness in Multivariate Time Series](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.10693/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The ubiquity of missing data in urban intelligence systems, attributable to adverse environmental conditions and equipment failures, poses a significant challenge to the efficacy of downstream applications, notably in the realms of traffic forecasting and energy consumption prediction. Therefore, it is imperative to develop a robust spatio-temporal learning methodology capable of extracting meaningful insights from incomplete datasets. Despite the existence of methodologies for spatio-temporal graph forecasting in the presence of missing values, unresolved issues persist. Primarily, the majority of extant research is predicated on time-series analysis, thereby neglecting the dynamic spatial correlations inherent in sensor networks. Additionally, the complexity of missing data patterns compounds the intricacy of the problem. Furthermore, the variability in maintenance conditions results in a significant fluctuation in the ratio and pattern of missing values, thereby challenging the generalizability of predictive models. In response to these challenges, this study introduces GeoMAE, a self-supervised spatio-temporal representation learning model. The model is comprised of three principal components: an input preprocessing module, an attention-based spatio-temporal forecasting network (STAFN), and an auxiliary learning task, which draws inspiration from Masking AutoEncoders to enhance the robustness of spatio-temporal representation learning. Empirical evaluations on real-world datasets demonstrate that GeoMAE significantly outperforms existing benchmarks, achieving up to 13.20% relative improvement over the best baseline models.
