SX-GeoTree: Self-eXplaining Geospatial Regression Tree Incorporating the Spatial Similarity of Feature Attributions

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Hauptverfasser: Kang, Chaogui, Luo, Lijian, Guan, Qingfeng, Liu, Yu
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Kang, Chaogui
Luo, Lijian
Guan, Qingfeng
Liu, Yu
author_facet Kang, Chaogui
Luo, Lijian
Guan, Qingfeng
Liu, Yu
contents Decision trees remain central for tabular prediction but struggle with (i) capturing spatial dependence and (ii) producing locally stable (robust) explanations. We present SX-GeoTree, a self-explaining geospatial regression tree that integrates three coupled objectives during recursive splitting: impurity reduction (MSE), spatial residual control (global Moran's I), and explanation robustness via modularity maximization on a consensus similarity network formed from (a) geographically weighted regression (GWR) coefficient distances (stimulus-response similarity) and (b) SHAP attribution distances (explanatory similarity). We recast local Lipschitz continuity of feature attributions as a network community preservation problem, enabling scalable enforcement of spatially coherent explanations without per-sample neighborhood searches. Experiments on two exemplar tasks (county-level GDP in Fujian, n=83; point-wise housing prices in Seattle, n=21,613) show SX-GeoTree maintains competitive predictive accuracy (within 0.01 $R^{2}$ of decision trees) while improving residual spatial evenness and doubling attribution consensus (modularity: Fujian 0.19 vs 0.09; Seattle 0.10 vs 0.05). Ablation confirms Moran's I and modularity terms are complementary; removing either degrades both spatial residual structure and explanation stability. The framework demonstrates how spatial similarity - extended beyond geometric proximity through GWR-derived local relationships - can be embedded in interpretable models, advancing trustworthy geospatial machine learning and offering a transferable template for domain-aware explainability.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_19845
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SX-GeoTree: Self-eXplaining Geospatial Regression Tree Incorporating the Spatial Similarity of Feature Attributions
Kang, Chaogui
Luo, Lijian
Guan, Qingfeng
Liu, Yu
Machine Learning
Computers and Society
Decision trees remain central for tabular prediction but struggle with (i) capturing spatial dependence and (ii) producing locally stable (robust) explanations. We present SX-GeoTree, a self-explaining geospatial regression tree that integrates three coupled objectives during recursive splitting: impurity reduction (MSE), spatial residual control (global Moran's I), and explanation robustness via modularity maximization on a consensus similarity network formed from (a) geographically weighted regression (GWR) coefficient distances (stimulus-response similarity) and (b) SHAP attribution distances (explanatory similarity). We recast local Lipschitz continuity of feature attributions as a network community preservation problem, enabling scalable enforcement of spatially coherent explanations without per-sample neighborhood searches. Experiments on two exemplar tasks (county-level GDP in Fujian, n=83; point-wise housing prices in Seattle, n=21,613) show SX-GeoTree maintains competitive predictive accuracy (within 0.01 $R^{2}$ of decision trees) while improving residual spatial evenness and doubling attribution consensus (modularity: Fujian 0.19 vs 0.09; Seattle 0.10 vs 0.05). Ablation confirms Moran's I and modularity terms are complementary; removing either degrades both spatial residual structure and explanation stability. The framework demonstrates how spatial similarity - extended beyond geometric proximity through GWR-derived local relationships - can be embedded in interpretable models, advancing trustworthy geospatial machine learning and offering a transferable template for domain-aware explainability.
title SX-GeoTree: Self-eXplaining Geospatial Regression Tree Incorporating the Spatial Similarity of Feature Attributions
topic Machine Learning
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.19845