AirDDE: Multifactor Neural Delay Differential Equations for Air Quality Forecasting

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wu, Binqing, Shang, Zongjiang, Liu, Shiyu, Huang, Jianlong, Xu, Jiahui, Chen, Ling
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Wu, Binqing
Shang, Zongjiang
Liu, Shiyu
Huang, Jianlong
Xu, Jiahui
Chen, Ling
author_facet Wu, Binqing
Shang, Zongjiang
Liu, Shiyu
Huang, Jianlong
Xu, Jiahui
Chen, Ling
contents Accurate air quality forecasting is essential for public health and environmental sustainability, but remains challenging due to the complex pollutant dynamics. Existing deep learning methods often model pollutant dynamics as an instantaneous process, overlooking the intrinsic delays in pollutant propagation. Thus, we propose AirDDE, the first neural delay differential equation framework in this task that integrates delay modeling into a continuous-time pollutant evolution under physical guidance. Specifically, two novel components are introduced: (1) a memory-augmented attention module that retrieves globally and locally historical features, which can adaptively capture delay effects modulated by multifactor data; and (2) a physics-guided delay evolving function, grounded in the diffusion-advection equation, that models diffusion, delayed advection, and source/sink terms, which can capture delay-aware pollutant accumulation patterns with physical plausibility. Extensive experiments on three real-world datasets demonstrate that AirDDE achieves the state-of-the-art forecasting performance with an average MAE reduction of 8.79\% over the best baselines. The code is available at https://github.com/w2obin/airdde-aaai.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_17529
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle AirDDE: Multifactor Neural Delay Differential Equations for Air Quality Forecasting
Wu, Binqing
Shang, Zongjiang
Liu, Shiyu
Huang, Jianlong
Xu, Jiahui
Chen, Ling
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Accurate air quality forecasting is essential for public health and environmental sustainability, but remains challenging due to the complex pollutant dynamics. Existing deep learning methods often model pollutant dynamics as an instantaneous process, overlooking the intrinsic delays in pollutant propagation. Thus, we propose AirDDE, the first neural delay differential equation framework in this task that integrates delay modeling into a continuous-time pollutant evolution under physical guidance. Specifically, two novel components are introduced: (1) a memory-augmented attention module that retrieves globally and locally historical features, which can adaptively capture delay effects modulated by multifactor data; and (2) a physics-guided delay evolving function, grounded in the diffusion-advection equation, that models diffusion, delayed advection, and source/sink terms, which can capture delay-aware pollutant accumulation patterns with physical plausibility. Extensive experiments on three real-world datasets demonstrate that AirDDE achieves the state-of-the-art forecasting performance with an average MAE reduction of 8.79\% over the best baselines. The code is available at https://github.com/w2obin/airdde-aaai.
title AirDDE: Multifactor Neural Delay Differential Equations for Air Quality Forecasting
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.17529