Decision-aware training of spatiotemporal forecasting models to select a top K subset of sites for intervention

Kyle Heuton; F. Samuel Muench; Shikhar Shrestha; Thomas J. Stopka; Michael C. Hughes

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arXiv · 2503.05622

Decision-aware training of spatiotemporal forecasting models to select a top K subset of sites for intervention

Kyle Heuton·F. Samuel Muench·Shikhar Shrestha·Thomas J. Stopka·Michael C. Hughes

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Abstract

Optimal allocation of scarce resources is a common problem for decision makers faced with choosing a limited number of locations for intervention. Spatiotemporal prediction models could make such decisions data-driven. A recent performance metric called fraction of best possible reach (BPR) measures the impact of using a model's recommended size K subset of sites compared to the best possible top-K in hindsight. We tackle two open problems related to BPR. First, we explore how to rank all sites numerically given a probabilistic model that predicts event counts jointly across sites. Ranking via the per-site mean is suboptimal for BPR. Instead, we offer a better ranking for BPR backed by decision theory. Second, we explore how to train a probabilistic model's parameters to maximize BPR. Discrete selection of K sites implies all-zero parameter gradients which prevent standard gradient training. We overcome this barrier via advances in perturbed optimizers. We further suggest a training objective that combines likelihood with a decision-aware BPR constraint to deliver high-quality top-K rankings as well as good forecasts for all sites. We demonstrate our approach on two where-to-intervene applications: mitigating opioid-related fatal overdoses for public health and monitoring endangered wildlife.

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Kyle Heuton, F. Samuel Muench, Shikhar Shrestha, Thomas J. Stopka, Michael C. Hughes. 2025-11-05. Decision-aware training of spatiotemporal forecasting models to select a top K subset of sites for intervention. https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.05622

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