Spatial Reasoning
The Geography of Transportation Cybersecurity: Visitor Flows, Industry Clusters, and Spatial Dynamics
Wang, Yuhao, Wang, Kailai, Hu, Songhua, Yunpeng, null, Zhang, null, Lim, Gino, Zhu, Pengyu
The rapid evolution of the transportation cybersecurity ecosystem, encompassing cybersecurity, automotive, and transportation and logistics sectors, will lead to the formation of distinct spatial clusters and visitor flow patterns across the US. This study examines the spatiotemporal dynamics of visitor flows, analyzing how socioeconomic factors shape industry clustering and workforce distribution within these evolving sectors. To model and predict visitor flow patterns, we develop a BiTransGCN framework, integrating an attention-based Transformer architecture with a Graph Convolutional Network backbone. By integrating AI-enabled forecasting techniques with spatial analysis, this study improves our ability to track, interpret, and anticipate changes in industry clustering and mobility trends, thereby supporting strategic planning for a secure and resilient transportation network. It offers a data-driven foundation for economic planning, workforce development, and targeted investments in the transportation cybersecurity ecosystem.
Unsupervised Urban Land Use Mapping with Street View Contrastive Clustering and a Geographical Prior
Che, Lin, Chen, Yizi, Jin, Tanhua, Raubal, Martin, Schindler, Konrad, Kiefer, Peter
Urban land use classification and mapping are critical for urban planning, resource management, and environmental monitoring. Existing remote sensing techniques often lack precision in complex urban environments due to the absence of ground-level details. Unlike aerial perspectives, street view images provide a ground-level view that captures more human and social activities relevant to land use in complex urban scenes. Existing street view-based methods primarily rely on supervised classification, which is challenged by the scarcity of high-quality labeled data and the difficulty of generalizing across diverse urban landscapes. This study introduces an unsupervised contrastive clustering model for street view images with a built-in geographical prior, to enhance clustering performance. When combined with a simple visual assignment of the clusters, our approach offers a flexible and customizable solution to land use mapping, tailored to the specific needs of urban planners. We experimentally show that our method can generate land use maps from geotagged street view image datasets of two cities. As our methodology relies on the universal spatial coherence of geospatial data ("Tobler's law"), it can be adapted to various settings where street view images are available, to enable scalable, unsupervised land use mapping and updating. The code will be available at https://github.com/lin102/CCGP.
Kernel Dynamic Mode Decomposition For Sparse Reconstruction of Closable Koopman Operators
Panda, Nishant, Singh, Himanshu, Kutz, J. Nathan
Spatial temporal reconstruction of dynamical system is indeed a crucial problem with diverse applications ranging from climate modeling to numerous chaotic and physical processes. These reconstructions are based on the harmonious relationship between the Koopman operators and the choice of dictionary, determined implicitly by a kernel function. This leads to the approximation of the Koopman operators in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS) associated with that kernel function. Data-driven analysis of Koopman operators demands that Koopman operators be closable over the underlying RKHS, which still remains an unsettled, unexplored, and critical operator-theoretic challenge. We aim to address this challenge by investigating the embedding of the Laplacian kernel in the measure-theoretic sense, giving rise to a rich enough RKHS to settle the closability of the Koopman operators. We leverage Kernel Extended Dynamic Mode Decomposition with the Laplacian kernel to reconstruct the dominant spatial temporal modes of various diverse dynamical systems. After empirical demonstration, we concrete such results by providing the theoretical justification leveraging the closability of the Koopman operators on the RKHS generated by the Laplacian kernel on the avenues of Koopman mode decomposition and the Koopman spectral measure. Such results were explored from both grounds of operator theory and data-driven science, thus making the Laplacian kernel a robust choice for spatial-temporal reconstruction.
GeoNav: Empowering MLLMs with Explicit Geospatial Reasoning Abilities for Language-Goal Aerial Navigation
Xu, Haotian, Hu, Yue, Gao, Chen, Zhu, Zhengqiu, Zhao, Yong, Li, Yong, Yin, Quanjun
Language-goal aerial navigation is a critical challenge in embodied AI, requiring UAVs to localize targets in complex environments such as urban blocks based on textual specification. Existing methods, often adapted from indoor navigation, struggle to scale due to limited field of view, semantic ambiguity among objects, and lack of structured spatial reasoning. In this work, we propose GeoNav, a geospatially aware multimodal agent to enable long-range navigation. GeoNav operates in three phases-landmark navigation, target search, and precise localization-mimicking human coarse-to-fine spatial strategies. To support such reasoning, it dynamically builds two different types of spatial memory. The first is a global but schematic cognitive map, which fuses prior textual geographic knowledge and embodied visual cues into a top-down, annotated form for fast navigation to the landmark region. The second is a local but delicate scene graph representing hierarchical spatial relationships between blocks, landmarks, and objects, which is used for definite target localization. On top of this structured representation, GeoNav employs a spatially aware, multimodal chain-of-thought prompting mechanism to enable multimodal large language models with efficient and interpretable decision-making across stages. On the CityNav urban navigation benchmark, GeoNav surpasses the current state-of-the-art by up to 12.53% in success rate and significantly improves navigation efficiency, even in hard-level tasks. Ablation studies highlight the importance of each module, showcasing how geospatial representations and coarse-to-fine reasoning enhance UAV navigation.
Nature's Insight: A Novel Framework and Comprehensive Analysis of Agentic Reasoning Through the Lens of Neuroscience
Liu, Zinan, Li, Haoran, Lu, Jingyi, Ma, Gaoyuan, Hong, Xu, Iacca, Giovanni, Kumar, Arvind, Tang, Shaojun, Wang, Lin
Autonomous AI is no longer a hard-to-reach concept, it enables the agents to move beyond executing tasks to independently addressing complex problems, adapting to change while handling the uncertainty of the environment. However, what makes the agents truly autonomous? It is agentic reasoning, that is crucial for foundation models to develop symbolic logic, statistical correlations, or large-scale pattern recognition to process information, draw inferences, and make decisions. However, it remains unclear why and how existing agentic reasoning approaches work, in comparison to biological reasoning, which instead is deeply rooted in neural mechanisms involving hierarchical cognition, multimodal integration, and dynamic interactions. In this work, we propose a novel neuroscience-inspired framework for agentic reasoning. Grounded in three neuroscience-based definitions and supported by mathematical and biological foundations, we propose a unified framework modeling reasoning from perception to action, encompassing four core types, perceptual, dimensional, logical, and interactive, inspired by distinct functional roles observed in the human brain. We apply this framework to systematically classify and analyze existing AI reasoning methods, evaluating their theoretical foundations, computational designs, and practical limitations. We also explore its implications for building more generalizable, cognitively aligned agents in physical and virtual environments. Finally, building on our framework, we outline future directions and propose new neural-inspired reasoning methods, analogous to chain-of-thought prompting. By bridging cognitive neuroscience and AI, this work offers a theoretical foundation and practical roadmap for advancing agentic reasoning in intelligent systems. The associated project can be found at: https://github.com/BioRAILab/Awesome-Neuroscience-Agent-Reasoning .
SpatialPrompting: Keyframe-driven Zero-Shot Spatial Reasoning with Off-the-Shelf Multimodal Large Language Models
Taguchi, Shun, Deguchi, Hideki, Hamazaki, Takumi, Sakai, Hiroyuki
This study introduces SpatialPrompting, a novel framework that harnesses the emergent reasoning capabilities of off-the-shelf multimodal large language models to achieve zero-shot spatial reasoning in three-dimensional (3D) environments. Unlike existing methods that rely on expensive 3D-specific fine-tuning with specialized 3D inputs such as point clouds or voxel-based features, SpatialPrompting employs a keyframe-driven prompt generation strategy. This framework uses metrics such as vision-language similarity, Mahalanobis distance, field of view, and image sharpness to select a diverse and informative set of keyframes from image sequences and then integrates them with corresponding camera pose data to effectively abstract spatial relationships and infer complex 3D structures. The proposed framework not only establishes a new paradigm for flexible spatial reasoning that utilizes intuitive visual and positional cues but also achieves state-of-the-art zero-shot performance on benchmark datasets, such as ScanQA and SQA3D, across several metrics. The proposed method effectively eliminates the need for specialized 3D inputs and fine-tuning, offering a simpler and more scalable alternative to conventional approaches.
FlexiAct: Towards Flexible Action Control in Heterogeneous Scenarios
Zhang, Shiyi, Zhuang, Junhao, Zhang, Zhaoyang, Shan, Ying, Tang, Yansong
Action customization involves generating videos where the subject performs actions dictated by input control signals. Current methods use pose-guided or global motion customization but are limited by strict constraints on spatial structure, such as layout, skeleton, and viewpoint consistency, reducing adaptability across diverse subjects and scenarios. To overcome these limitations, we propose FlexiAct, which transfers actions from a reference video to an arbitrary target image. Unlike existing methods, FlexiAct allows for variations in layout, viewpoint, and skeletal structure between the subject of the reference video and the target image, while maintaining identity consistency. Achieving this requires precise action control, spatial structure adaptation, and consistency preservation. To this end, we introduce RefAdapter, a lightweight image-conditioned adapter that excels in spatial adaptation and consistency preservation, surpassing existing methods in balancing appearance consistency and structural flexibility. Additionally, based on our observations, the denoising process exhibits varying levels of attention to motion (low frequency) and appearance details (high frequency) at different timesteps. So we propose FAE (Frequency-aware Action Extraction), which, unlike existing methods that rely on separate spatial-temporal architectures, directly achieves action extraction during the denoising process. Experiments demonstrate that our method effectively transfers actions to subjects with diverse layouts, skeletons, and viewpoints. We release our code and model weights to support further research at https://shiyi-zh0408.github.io/projectpages/FlexiAct/
Sightful Spacetop for Windows Review: Spatial Computing Is Here
I've been eagerly awaiting the advent of spatial computing. My home office desk setup, with multiple screens and browser windows, helps me be very productive. But on the go, I'm relegated to a laptop's 13-inch screen (or packing a portable monitor), and I'm not as efficient. Spatial computing--usually driven by a mixed reality headset or smart glasses--lets you craft a multi-monitor virtual workspace, where you can place apps and browser windows around your periphery, to replicate the experience you have set up at home or the office. Or you can take it a step further because you're only limited by your imagination.
mwBTFreddy: A Dataset for Flash Flood Damage Assessment in Urban Malawi
Chapuma, Evelyn, Mengezi, Grey, Msasa, Lewis, Taylor, Amelia
This paper describes the mwBTFreddy dataset, a resource developed to support flash flood damage assessment in urban Malawi, specifically focusing on the impacts of Cyclone Freddy in 2023. The dataset comprises paired pre- and post-disaster satellite images sourced from Google Earth Pro, accompanied by JSON files containing labelled building annotations with geographic coordinates and damage levels (no damage, minor, major, or destroyed). Developed by the Kuyesera AI Lab at the Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences, this dataset is intended to facilitate the development of machine learning models tailored to building detection and damage classification in African urban contexts. It also supports flood damage visualisation and spatial analysis to inform decisions on relocation, infrastructure planning, and emergency response in climate-vulnerable regions.
Explainable AI in Spatial Analysis
A key objective in spatial analysis is to model spatial relationships and infer spatial processes to generate knowledge from spatial data, which has been largely based on spatial statistical methods. More recently, machine learning offers scalable and flexible approach es that complement traditional methods and has been increasingly applied in spatial data science . Despite its advantages, machine learning is often criticized for being a black box, which limits our understanding of model behavior and output . Recognizing this limitation, XAI has emerged as a pivotal field in AI that provides methods to explain the output of machine learning models to enhance transparency and understanding. These methods are crucial for model diagnosis, bias detection, and ensuring the reliability of results obtained from machine learning models. This chapter introduces key concepts and methods in XAI with a focus on Shapley value - based approach es, which is arguably the most popular XAI method, and their integration with spatial analysis. An empirical example of county - level voting behaviors in the 2020 Presidential election is presented to demonstrate the use of Shapley values and spatial analysis with a comparison to multi - scale geograp hically weighted regression . The chapter concludes with a discussion on the challenges and limitations of current XAI techniques and proposes new directions .