pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Spatio-Temporal Graph Neural Network for Urban Spaces: Interpolating Citywide Traffic Volume
Authors: Silke K. Kaiser, Filipe Rodrigues, Carlos Lima Azevedo, Lynn H. Kaack
Date: 2025-05-07 00:00:00
Tasks: Graph Neural Network

Reliable street-level traffic volume data, covering multiple modes of transportation, helps urban planning by informing decisions on infrastructure improvements, traffic management, and public transportation. Yet, traffic sensors measuring traffic volume are typically scarcely located, due to their high deployment and maintenance costs. To address this, interpolation methods can estimate traffic volumes at unobserved locations using available data. Graph Neural Networks have shown strong performance in traffic volume forecasting, particularly on highways and major arterial networks. Applying them to urban settings, however, presents unique challenges: urban networks exhibit greater structural diversity, traffic volumes are highly overdispersed with many zeros, the best way to account for spatial dependencies remains unclear, and sensor coverage is often very sparse. We introduce the Graph Neural Network for Urban Interpolation (GNNUI), a novel urban traffic volume estimation approach. GNNUI employs a masking algorithm to learn interpolation, integrates node features to capture functional roles, and uses a loss function tailored to zero-inflated traffic distributions. In addition to the model, we introduce two new open, large-scale urban traffic volume benchmarks, covering different transportation modes: Strava cycling data from Berlin and New York City taxi data. GNNUI outperforms recent, some graph-based, interpolation methods across metrics (MAE, RMSE, true-zero rate, Kullback-Leibler divergence) and remains robust from 90% to 1% sensor coverage. On Strava, for instance, MAE rises only from 7.1 to 10.5, on Taxi from 23.0 to 40.4, demonstrating strong performance under extreme data scarcity, common in real-world urban settings. We also examine how graph connectivity choices influence model accuracy.
Modeling supply chain compliance response strategies based on AI synthetic data with structural path regression: A Simulation Study of EU 2027 Mandatory Labor Regulations
Authors: Wei Meng
Date: 2025-05-04 00:00:00
Tasks: regression, Synthetic Data Generation

In the context of the new mandatory labor compliance in the European Union (EU), which will be implemented in 2027, supply chain enterprises face stringent working hour management requirements and compliance risks. In order to scientifically predict the enterprises' coping behaviors and performance outcomes under the policy impact, this paper constructs a methodological framework that integrates the AI synthetic data generation mechanism and structural path regression modeling to simulate the enterprises' strategic transition paths under the new regulations. In terms of research methodology, this paper adopts high-quality simulation data generated based on Monte Carlo mechanism and NIST synthetic data standards to construct a structural path analysis model that includes multiple linear regression, logistic regression, mediation effect and moderating effect. The variable system covers 14 indicators such as enterprise working hours, compliance investment, response speed, automation level, policy dependence, etc. The variable set with explanatory power is screened out through exploratory data analysis (EDA) and VIF multicollinearity elimination. The findings show that compliance investment has a significant positive impact on firm survival and its effect is transmitted through the mediating path of the level of intelligence; meanwhile, firms' dependence on the EU market significantly moderates the strength of this mediating effect. It is concluded that AI synthetic data combined with structural path modeling provides an effective tool for high-intensity regulatory simulation, which can provide a quantitative basis for corporate strategic response, policy design and AI-assisted decision-making in the pre-prediction stage lacking real scenario data. Keywords: AI synthetic data, structural path regression modeling, compliance response strategy, EU 2027 mandatory labor regulation
An Optimized Evacuation Plan for an Active-Shooter Situation Constrained by Network Capacity
Authors: Joseph Lavalle-Rivera, Aniirudh Ramesh, Subhadeep Chakraborty
Date: 2025-04-29 00:00:00

A total of more than 3400 public shootings have occurred in the United States between 2016 and 2022. Among these, 25.1% of them took place in an educational institution, 29.4% at the workplace including office buildings, 19.6% in retail store locations, and 13.4% in restaurants and bars. During these critical scenarios, making the right decisions while evacuating can make the difference between life and death. However, emergency evacuation is intensely stressful, which along with the lack of verifiable real-time information may lead to fatal incorrect decisions. To tackle this problem, we developed a multi-route routing optimization algorithm that determines multiple optimal safe routes for each evacuee while accounting for available capacity along the route, thus reducing the threat of crowding and bottlenecking. Overall, our algorithm reduces the total casualties by 34.16% and 53.3%, compared to our previous routing algorithm without capacity constraints and an expert-advised routing strategy respectively. Further, our approach to reduce crowding resulted in an approximate 50% reduction in occupancy in key bottlenecking nodes compared to both of the other evacuation algorithms.
An Early Warning Model for Forced Displacement
Authors: Geraldine Henningsen
Date: 2025-04-29 00:00:00
Tasks: Humanitarian, model

Monitoring tools for anticipatory action are increasingly gaining traction to improve the efficiency and timeliness of humanitarian responses. Whilst predictive models can now forecast conflicts with high accuracy, translating these predictions into potential forced displacement movements remains challenging because it is often unclear which precise events will trigger significant population movements. This paper presents a novel monitoring approach for refugee and asylum seeker flows that addresses this challenge. Using gradient boosting classification, we combine conflict forecasts with a comprehensive set of economic, political, and demographic variables to assess two distinct risks at the country of origin: the likelihood of significant displacement flows and the probability of sudden increases in these flows. The model generates country-specific monthly risk indices for these two events with prediction horizons of one, three, and six months. Our analysis shows high accuracy in predicting significant displacement flows and good accuracy in forecasting sudden increases in displacement--the latter being inherently more difficult to predict, given the complexity of displacement triggers. We achieve these results by including predictive factors beyond conflict, thereby demonstrating that forced displacement risks can be assessed through an integrated analysis of multiple country-level indicators. Whilst these risk indices provide valuable quantitative support for humanitarian planning, they should always be understood as decision-support tools within a broader analytical framework.
United States Road Accident Prediction using Random Forest Predictor
Authors: Dominic Parosh Yamarthi, Haripriya Raman, Shamsad Parvin
Date: 2025-04-28 00:00:00
Tasks: AutoML, Prediction, Time Series Analysis

Road accidents significantly threaten public safety and require in-depth analysis for effective prevention and mitigation strategies. This paper focuses on predicting accidents through the examination of a comprehensive traffic dataset covering 49 states in the United States. The dataset integrates information from diverse sources, including transportation departments, law enforcement, and traffic sensors. This paper specifically emphasizes predicting the number of accidents, utilizing advanced machine learning models such as regression analysis and time series analysis. The inclusion of various factors, ranging from environmental conditions to human behavior and infrastructure, ensures a holistic understanding of the dynamics influencing road safety. Temporal and spatial analysis further allows for the identification of trends, seasonal variations, and high-risk areas. The implications of this research extend to proactive decision-making for policymakers and transportation authorities. By providing accurate predictions and quantifiable insights into expected accident rates under different conditions, the paper aims to empower authorities to allocate resources efficiently and implement targeted interventions. The goal is to contribute to the development of informed policies and interventions that enhance road safety, creating a safer environment for all road users. Keywords: Machine Learning, Random Forest, Accident Prediction, AutoML, LSTM.
Patchwork: A Unified Framework for RAG Serving
Authors: Bodun Hu, Luis Pabon, Saurabh Agarwal, Aditya Akella
Date: 2025-05-01 00:00:00
Tasks: Language Modeling, Language Modelling, Large Language Model, RAG, Retrieval-augmented Generation, Scheduling

Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) has emerged as a new paradigm for enhancing Large Language Model reliability through integration with external knowledge sources. However, efficient deployment of these systems presents significant technical challenges due to their inherently heterogeneous computational pipelines comprising LLMs, databases, and specialized processing components. We introduce Patchwork, a comprehensive end-to-end RAG serving framework designed to address these efficiency bottlenecks. Patchwork's architecture offers three key innovations: First, it provides a flexible specification interface enabling users to implement custom RAG pipelines. Secondly, it deploys these pipelines as distributed inference systems while optimizing for the unique scalability characteristics of individual RAG components. Third, Patchwork incorporates an online scheduling mechanism that continuously monitors request load and execution progress, dynamically minimizing SLO violations through strategic request prioritization and resource auto-scaling. Our experimental evaluation across four distinct RAG implementations demonstrates that Patchwork delivers substantial performance improvements over commercial alternatives, achieving throughput gains exceeding 48% while simultaneously reducing SLO violations by ~24%.
UniCO: Towards a Unified Model for Combinatorial Optimization Problems
Authors: Zefang Zong, Xiaochen Wei, Guozhen Zhang, Chen Gao, Huandong Wang, Yong Li
Date: 2025-05-07 00:00:00
Tasks: Combinatorial Optimization, Self-Supervised Learning

Combinatorial Optimization (CO) encompasses a wide range of problems that arise in many real-world scenarios. While significant progress has been made in developing learning-based methods for specialized CO problems, a unified model with a single architecture and parameter set for diverse CO problems remains elusive. Such a model would offer substantial advantages in terms of efficiency and convenience. In this paper, we introduce UniCO, a unified model for solving various CO problems. Inspired by the success of next-token prediction, we frame each problem-solving process as a Markov Decision Process (MDP), tokenize the corresponding sequential trajectory data, and train the model using a transformer backbone. To reduce token length in the trajectory data, we propose a CO-prefix design that aggregates static problem features. To address the heterogeneity of state and action tokens within the MDP, we employ a two-stage self-supervised learning approach. In this approach, a dynamic prediction model is first trained and then serves as a pre-trained model for subsequent policy generation. Experiments across 10 CO problems showcase the versatility of UniCO, emphasizing its ability to generalize to new, unseen problems with minimal fine-tuning, achieving even few-shot or zero-shot performance. Our framework offers a valuable complement to existing neural CO methods that focus on optimizing performance for individual problems.
BedreFlyt: Improving Patient Flows through Hospital Wards with Digital Twins
Authors: Riccardo Sieve, Paul Kobialka, Laura Slaughter, Rudolf Schlatte, Einar Broch Johnsen, Silvia Lizeth Tapia Tarifa
Date: 2025-05-07 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making

Digital twins are emerging as a valuable tool for short-term decision-making as well as for long-term strategic planning across numerous domains, including process industry, energy, space, transport, and healthcare. This paper reports on our ongoing work on designing a digital twin to enhance resource planning, e.g., for the in-patient ward needs in hospitals. By leveraging executable formal models for system exploration, ontologies for knowledge representation and an SMT solver for constraint satisfiability, our approach aims to explore hypothetical "what-if" scenarios to improve strategic planning processes, as well as to solve concrete, short-term decision-making tasks. Our proposed solution uses the executable formal model to turn a stream of arriving patients, that need to be hospitalized, into a stream of optimization problems, e.g., capturing daily inpatient ward needs, that can be solved by SMT techniques. The knowledge base, which formalizes domain knowledge, is used to model the needed configuration in the digital twin, allowing the twin to support both short-term decision-making and long-term strategic planning by generating scenarios spanning average-case as well as worst-case resource needs, depending on the expected treatment of patients, as well as ranging over variations in available resources, e.g., bed distribution in different rooms. We illustrate our digital twin architecture by considering the problem of bed bay allocation in a hospital ward.
PosterO: Structuring Layout Trees to Enable Language Models in Generalized Content-Aware Layout Generation
Authors: HsiaoYuan Hsu, Yuxin Peng
Date: 2025-05-06 00:00:00
Proceeding: CVPR 2025 1
Tasks: In-Context Learning, Layout Generation

In poster design, content-aware layout generation is crucial for automatically arranging visual-textual elements on the given image. With limited training data, existing work focused on image-centric enhancement. However, this neglects the diversity of layouts and fails to cope with shape-variant elements or diverse design intents in generalized settings. To this end, we proposed a layout-centric approach that leverages layout knowledge implicit in large language models (LLMs) to create posters for omnifarious purposes, hence the name PosterO. Specifically, it structures layouts from datasets as trees in SVG language by universal shape, design intent vectorization, and hierarchical node representation. Then, it applies LLMs during inference to predict new layout trees by in-context learning with intent-aligned example selection. After layout trees are generated, we can seamlessly realize them into poster designs by editing the chat with LLMs. Extensive experimental results have demonstrated that PosterO can generate visually appealing layouts for given images, achieving new state-of-the-art performance across various benchmarks. To further explore PosterO's abilities under the generalized settings, we built PStylish7, the first dataset with multi-purpose posters and various-shaped elements, further offering a challenging test for advanced research.
Price Equilibria in a Spatial Competition with Captive Buyers
Authors: Shinnosuke Kawai, Kuninori Nakagawa
Date: 2025-05-11 00:00:00

This paper explores price competition with exogenous product differentiation in a spatial model similar to that of Nakagawa (2023). Nakagawa examines product differentiation within the framework of Varian (1980). Nakagawa integrates Varian's concept of uninformed consumers, who lack complete price information, into a spatial model based on Hotelling (1929). While Nakagawa placed informed consumers at the center of the Hotelling line and used quadratic transportation costs, our study employs a uniform distribution of informed consumers and linear transportation costs. This approach enables a more direct comparison with established spatial competition literature, particularly Osborne and Pitchik (1987). We classify equilibrium candidates and characterize the parameter regions corresponding to each equilibrium. There is no pure equilibrium in the region where we construct mixed strategy equilibria. Furthermore, we compare the expected profit in the equilibrium of our model with the findings of Osborne and Pitchik (1987). Finally, we discuss the impact of captive buyers on the nature of spatial competition.
Reinforcement Learning for Game-Theoretic Resource Allocation on Graphs
Authors: Zijian An, Lifeng Zhou
Date: 2025-05-08 00:00:00
Tasks: reinforcement-learning, Reinforcement Learning, Reinforcement Learning (RL), valid

Game-theoretic resource allocation on graphs (GRAG) involves two players competing over multiple steps to control nodes of interest on a graph, a problem modeled as a multi-step Colonel Blotto Game (MCBG). Finding optimal strategies is challenging due to the dynamic action space and structural constraints imposed by the graph. To address this, we formulate the MCBG as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) and apply Reinforcement Learning (RL) methods, specifically Deep Q-Network (DQN) and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO). To enforce graph constraints, we introduce an action-displacement adjacency matrix that dynamically generates valid action sets at each step. We evaluate RL performance across a variety of graph structures and initial resource distributions, comparing against random, greedy, and learned RL policies. Experimental results show that both DQN and PPO consistently outperform baseline strategies and converge to a balanced $50\%$ win rate when competing against the learned RL policy. Particularly, on asymmetric graphs, RL agents successfully exploit structural advantages and adapt their allocation strategies, even under disadvantageous initial resource distributions.
Domain-Adversarial Anatomical Graph Networks for Cross-User Human Activity Recognition
Authors: Xiaozhou Ye, Kevin I-Kai Wang
Date: 2025-05-08 00:00:00
Tasks: Activity Recognition, Domain Generalization, EEG, Graph Neural Network, Human Activity Recognition

Cross-user variability in Human Activity Recognition (HAR) remains a critical challenge due to differences in sensor placement, body dynamics, and behavioral patterns. Traditional methods often fail to capture biomechanical invariants that persist across users, limiting their generalization capability. We propose an Edge-Enhanced Graph-Based Adversarial Domain Generalization (EEG-ADG) framework that integrates anatomical correlation knowledge into a unified graph neural network (GNN) architecture. By modeling three biomechanically motivated relationships together-Interconnected Units, Analogous Units, and Lateral Units-our method encodes domain-invariant features while addressing user-specific variability through Variational Edge Feature Extractor. A Gradient Reversal Layer (GRL) enforces adversarial domain generalization, ensuring robustness to unseen users. Extensive experiments on OPPORTUNITY and DSADS datasets demonstrate state-of-the-art performance. Our work bridges biomechanical principles with graph-based adversarial learning by integrating information fusion techniques. This fusion of information underpins our unified and generalized model for cross-user HAR.
Design description of Wisdom Computing Persperctive
Authors: Tianyi Yu
Date: 2025-05-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Mamba

This course design aims to develop and research a handwriting matrix recognition and step-by-step visual calculation process display system, addressing the issue of abstract formulas and complex calculation steps that students find difficult to understand when learning mathematics. By integrating artificial intelligence with visualization animation technology, the system enhances precise recognition of handwritten matrix content through the introduction of Mamba backbone networks, completes digital extraction and matrix reconstruction using the YOLO model, and simultaneously combines CoordAttention coordinate attention mechanisms to improve the accurate grasp of character spatial positions. The calculation process is demonstrated frame by frame through the Manim animation engine, vividly showcasing each mathematical calculation step, helping students intuitively understand the intrinsic logic of mathematical operations. Through dynamically generating animation processes for different computational tasks, the system exhibits high modularity and flexibility, capable of generating various mathematical operation examples in real-time according to student needs. By innovating human-computer interaction methods, it brings mathematical calculation processes to life, helping students bridge the gap between knowledge and understanding on a deeper level, ultimately achieving a learning experience where "every step is understood." The system's scalability and interactivity make it an intuitive, user-friendly, and efficient auxiliary tool in education.
On the Average Secrecy Performance of Satellite Networks in Short Packet Communication Systems
Authors: Ramin Hashemi, Graciela Corral Briones, Risto Wichman
Date: 2025-05-13 00:00:00

This paper investigates the secrecy performance of satellite networks in short packet communication systems under shadowed Rician fading (SRF). We derive a lower bound on the average achievable secrecy rate in the finite blocklength regime (FBL) and provide analytical insights into the impact of key secrecy-related performance indicators (KPIs). Monte Carlo simulations validate the theoretical framework, and demonstrate that increasing the blocklength and improving the legitimate receiver's signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) enhance secrecy, while a stronger eavesdropper degrades it. Additionally, we show that directional antenna patterns can effectively reduce information leakage and provide secure satellite communications in the short packet regime. These findings offer valuable guidance for designing secure and efficient satellite-based communication systems, particularly in IoT and space-based networks.
Closed-Form Information Capacity of Canonical Signaling Models
Authors: Michał Komorowski
Date: 2025-05-13 00:00:00
Tasks: Diversity, Form, Mutual Information Estimation

We employ a unified framework for computing the information capacity of biological signaling systems using Fisher Information. By deriving closed-form or easily computable information capacity formulas, we quantify how well different signaling models, including binomial, multinomial, Poisson, Gaussian, and Gamma distributions, can discriminate among input signals. These expressions clarify how key features such as signal range, noise scaling, pathway length, and receivers' diversity shape the theoretical limits of sensing. In particular, we show how signal-to-noise ratio and fold-change sensitivity arise naturally within the Fisher formalism, and how signal degradation in cascades imposes linear information loss. Our results provide intuitive, analytically grounded tools to benchmark and guide the analysis of real signaling systems, without requiring computationally expensive mutual information estimation. While motivated by cellular communication, the framework generalizes to any system where noisy input-output relationships constrain transmission fidelity, including synthetic biology, sensor networks, and engineered communication channels.