TrendGNN: Towards Understanding of Epidemics, Beliefs, and Behaviors

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Tian, Mulin, Srivastava, Ajitesh
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Tian, Mulin
Srivastava, Ajitesh
author_facet Tian, Mulin
Srivastava, Ajitesh
contents Epidemic outcomes have a complex interplay with human behavior and beliefs. Most of the forecasting literature has focused on the task of predicting epidemic signals using simple mechanistic models or black-box models, such as deep transformers, that ingest all available signals without offering interpretability. However, to better understand the mechanisms and predict the impact of interventions, we need the ability to forecast signals associated with beliefs and behaviors in an interpretable manner. In this work, we propose a graph-based forecasting framework that first constructs a graph of interrelated signals based on trend similarity, and then applies graph neural networks (GNNs) for prediction. This approach enables interpretable analysis by revealing which signals are more predictable and which relationships contribute most to forecasting accuracy. We believe our method provides early steps towards a framework for interpretable modeling in domains with multiple potentially interdependent signals, with implications for building future simulation models that integrate behavior, beliefs, and observations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_00421
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle TrendGNN: Towards Understanding of Epidemics, Beliefs, and Behaviors
Tian, Mulin
Srivastava, Ajitesh
Machine Learning
Epidemic outcomes have a complex interplay with human behavior and beliefs. Most of the forecasting literature has focused on the task of predicting epidemic signals using simple mechanistic models or black-box models, such as deep transformers, that ingest all available signals without offering interpretability. However, to better understand the mechanisms and predict the impact of interventions, we need the ability to forecast signals associated with beliefs and behaviors in an interpretable manner. In this work, we propose a graph-based forecasting framework that first constructs a graph of interrelated signals based on trend similarity, and then applies graph neural networks (GNNs) for prediction. This approach enables interpretable analysis by revealing which signals are more predictable and which relationships contribute most to forecasting accuracy. We believe our method provides early steps towards a framework for interpretable modeling in domains with multiple potentially interdependent signals, with implications for building future simulation models that integrate behavior, beliefs, and observations.
title TrendGNN: Towards Understanding of Epidemics, Beliefs, and Behaviors
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.00421