# A Causality-Aware Spatiotemporal Model for Multi-Region and Multi-Pollutant Air Quality Forecasting

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21260 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21260/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 19 of its 46 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Sep 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [Neural Ordinary Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.07366/) (2018)
- [A Time Series is Worth 64 Words: Long-term Forecasting with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.14730/) (2022)
- [Spatio-Temporal Graph Convolutional Networks: A Deep Learning Framework for Traffic Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.04875/) (2017)
- [A Survey of Convolutional Neural Networks: Analysis, Applications, and Prospects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.02806/) (2020)
- [Deep Spatio-Temporal Residual Networks for Citywide Crowd Flows Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.00081/) (2016)
- [Discrete Graph Structure Learning for Forecasting Multiple Time Series](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06861/) (2021)
- [Learning Long-Term Dependencies in Irregularly-Sampled Time Series](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.04418/) (2020)
- [AirFormer: Predicting Nationwide Air Quality in China with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.15979/) (2022)
- [PM2.5-GNN: A Domain Knowledge Enhanced Graph Neural Network For PM2.5 Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.12898/) (2020)
- [GREAD: Graph Neural Reaction-Diffusion Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.14208/) (2022)
- [STDEN: Towards Physics-Guided Neural Networks for Traffic Flow Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.00225/) (2022)
- [AirPhyNet: Harnessing Physics-Guided Neural Networks for Air Quality Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03784/) (2024)
- [Air Quality Prediction with Physics-Guided Dual Neural ODEs in Open Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.19892/) (2024)
- [Climate Modeling with Neural Diffusion Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06011/) (2021)
- [S2IP-LLM: Semantic Space Informed Prompt Learning with LLM for Time Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05798/) (2024)
- [Novel Physics-Based Machine-Learning Models for Indoor Air Quality Approximations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.01438/) (2023)
- [Generating Fine-Grained Causality in Climate Time Series Data for Forecasting and Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.04254/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Breaking the Regional Barrier: Inductive Semantic Topology Learning for Worldwide Air Quality Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.21899/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Air pollution, a pressing global problem, threatens public health, environmental sustainability, and climate stability. Achieving accurate and scalable forecasting across spatially distributed monitoring stations is challenging due to intricate multi-pollutant interactions, evolving meteorological conditions, and region specific spatial heterogeneity. To address this challenge, we propose AirPCM, a novel deep spatiotemporal forecasting model that integrates multi-region, multi-pollutant dynamics with explicit meteorology-pollutant causality modeling. Unlike existing methods limited to single pollutants or localized regions, AirPCM employs a unified architecture to jointly capture cross-station spatial correlations, temporal auto-correlations, and meteorology-pollutant dynamic causality. This empowers fine-grained, interpretable multi-pollutant forecasting across varying geographic and temporal scales, including sudden pollution episodes. Extensive evaluations on multi-scale real-world datasets demonstrate that AirPCM consistently surpasses state-of-the-art baselines in both predictive accuracy and generalization capability. Moreover, the long-term forecasting capability of AirPCM provides actionable insights into future air quality trends and potential high-risk windows, offering timely support for evidence-based environmental governance and carbon mitigation planning.