With the digitization of modern cities, large data volumes and powerful computational resources facilitate the rapid update of intelligent models deployed in smart cities. Continual learning (CL) is a novel machine learning paradigm that constantly updates models to adapt to changing environments, where the learning tasks, data, and distributions can vary over time. Our survey provides a comprehensive review of continual learning methods that are widely used in smart city development. The content consists of three parts: 1) Methodology-wise. We categorize a large number of basic CL methods and advanced CL frameworks in combination with other learning paradigms including graph learning, spatial-temporal learning, multi-modal learning, and federated learning. 2) Application-wise. We present numerous CL applications covering transportation, environment, public health, safety, networks, and associated datasets related to urban computing. 3) Challenges. We discuss current problems and challenges and envision several promising research directions. We believe this survey can help relevant researchers quickly familiarize themselves with the current state of continual learning research used in smart city development and direct them to future research trends.

Data privacy and security have become a non-negligible factor in load forecasting. Previous researches mainly focus on training stage enhancement. However, once the model is trained and deployed, it may need to `forget' (i.e., remove the impact of) part of training data if the these data are found to be malicious or as requested by the data owner. This paper introduces the concept of machine unlearning which is specifically designed to remove the influence of part of the dataset on an already trained forecaster. However, direct unlearning inevitably degrades the model generalization ability. To balance between unlearning completeness and model performance, a performance-aware algorithm is proposed by evaluating the sensitivity of local model parameter change using influence function and sample re-weighting. Furthermore, we observe that the statistical criterion such as mean squared error, cannot fully reflect the operation cost of the downstream tasks in power system. Therefore, a task-aware machine unlearning is proposed whose objective is a trilevel optimization with dispatch and redispatch problems considered. We theoretically prove the existence of the gradient of such an objective, which is key to re-weighting the remaining samples. We tested the unlearning algorithms on linear, CNN, and MLP-Mixer based load forecasters with a realistic load dataset. The simulation demonstrates the balance between unlearning completeness and operational cost. All codes can be found at https://github.com/xuwkk/task_aware_machine_unlearning.

The predominant approach to facial action unit (AU) detection revolves around a supervised multi-label binary classification problem. Existing methodologies often encode pixel-level information of AUs, thereby imposing substantial demands on model complexity and expressiveness. Moreover, this practice elevates the susceptibility to overfitting due to the presence of noisy AU labels. In the present study, we introduce a contrastive learning framework enhanced by both supervised and self-supervised signals. The objective is to acquire discriminative features, deviating from the conventional pixel-level learning paradigm within the domain of AU detection. To address the challenge posed by noisy AU labels, we augment the supervised signal through the introduction of a self-supervised signal. This augmentation is achieved through positive sample sampling, encompassing three distinct types of positive sample pairs. Furthermore, to mitigate the imbalanced distribution of each AU type, we employ an importance re-weighting strategy tailored for minority AUs. The resulting loss, denoted as AUNCE, is proposed to encapsulate this strategy. Our experimental assessments, conducted on two widely-utilized benchmark datasets (BP4D and DISFA), underscore the superior performance of our approach compared to state-of-the-art methods in the realm of AU detection.

Leveraging the rich information extracted from light field (LF) cameras is instrumental for dense prediction tasks. However, adapting light field data to enhance Salient Object Detection (SOD) still follows the traditional RGB methods and remains under-explored in the community. Previous approaches predominantly employ a custom two-stream design to discover the implicit angular feature within light field cameras, leading to significant information isolation between different LF representations. In this study, we propose an efficient paradigm (LF Tracy) to address this limitation. We eschew the conventional specialized fusion and decoder architecture for a dual-stream backbone in favor of a unified, single-pipeline approach. This comprises firstly a simple yet effective data augmentation strategy called MixLD to bridge the connection of spatial, depth, and implicit angular information under different LF representations. A highly efficient information aggregation (IA) module is then introduced to boost asymmetric feature-wise information fusion. Owing to this innovative approach, our model surpasses the existing state-of-the-art methods, particularly demonstrating a 23% improvement over previous results on the latest large-scale PKU dataset. By utilizing only 28.9M parameters, the model achieves a 10% increase in accuracy with 3M additional parameters compared to its backbone using RGB images and an 86% rise to its backbone using LF images. The source code will be made publicly available at https://github.com/FeiBryantkit/LF-Tracy.

Spatio-temporal forecasting of future values of spatially correlated time series is important across many cyber-physical systems (CPS). Recent studies offer evidence that the use of graph neural networks to capture latent correlations between time series holds a potential for enhanced forecasting. However, most existing methods rely on pre-defined or self-learning graphs, which are either static or unintentionally dynamic, and thus cannot model the time-varying correlations that exhibit trends and periodicities caused by the regularity of the underlying processes in CPS. To tackle such limitation, we propose Time-aware Graph Structure Learning (TagSL), which extracts time-aware correlations among time series by measuring the interaction of node and time representations in high-dimensional spaces. Notably, we introduce time discrepancy learning that utilizes contrastive learning with distance-based regularization terms to constrain learned spatial correlations to a trend sequence. Additionally, we propose a periodic discriminant function to enable the capture of periodic changes from the state of nodes. Next, we present a Graph Convolution-based Gated Recurrent Unit (GCGRU) that jointly captures spatial and temporal dependencies while learning time-aware and node-specific patterns. Finally, we introduce a unified framework named Time-aware Graph Convolutional Recurrent Network (TGCRN), combining TagSL, and GCGRU in an encoder-decoder architecture for multi-step spatio-temporal forecasting. We report on experiments with TGCRN and popular existing approaches on five real-world datasets, thus providing evidence that TGCRN is capable of advancing the state-of-the-art. We also cover a detailed ablation study and visualization analysis, offering detailed insight into the effectiveness of time-aware structure learning.

Successful machine learning involves a complete pipeline of data, model, and downstream applications. Instead of treating them separately, there has been a prominent increase of attention within the constrained optimization (CO) and machine learning (ML) communities towards combining prediction and optimization models. The so-called end-to-end (E2E) learning captures the task-based objective for which they will be used for decision making. Although a large variety of E2E algorithms have been presented, it has not been fully investigated how to systematically address uncertainties involved in such models. Most of the existing work considers the uncertainties of ML in the input space and improves robustness through adversarial training. We extend this idea to E2E learning and prove that there is a robustness certification procedure by solving augmented integer programming. Furthermore, we show that neglecting the uncertainty of COs during training causes a new trigger for generalization errors. To include all these components, we propose a unified framework that covers the uncertainties emerging in both the input feature space of the ML models and the COs. The framework is described as a robust optimization problem and is practically solved via end-to-end adversarial training (E2E-AT). Finally, the performance of E2E-AT is evaluated by a real-world end-to-end power system operation problem, including load forecasting and sequential scheduling tasks.

Light field cameras, by harnessing the power of micro-lens array, are capable of capturing intricate angular and spatial details. This allows for acquiring complex light patterns and details from multiple angles, significantly enhancing the precision of image semantic segmentation, a critical aspect of scene interpretation in vision intelligence. However, the extensive angular information of light field cameras contains a large amount of redundant data, which is overwhelming for the limited hardware resources of intelligent vehicles. Besides, inappropriate compression leads to information corruption and data loss. To excavate representative information, we propose a new paradigm, Omni-Aperture Fusion model (OAFuser), which leverages dense context from the central view and discovers the angular information from sub-aperture images to generate a semantically consistent result. To avoid feature loss during network propagation and simultaneously streamline the redundant information from the light field camera, we present a simple yet very effective Sub-Aperture Fusion Module (SAFM) to embed sub-aperture images into angular features without any additional memory cost. Furthermore, to address the mismatched spatial information across viewpoints, we present a Center Angular Rectification Module (CARM) to realize feature resorting and prevent feature occlusion caused by asymmetric information. Our proposed OAFuser achieves state-of-the-art performance on the UrbanLF-Real and -Syn datasets and sets a new record of 84.93% in mIoU on the UrbanLF-Real Extended dataset, with a gain of +4.53%. The source code of OAFuser will be available at https://github.com/FeiBryantkit/OAFuser.

Language model alignment is a cutting-edge technique in large language model training to align the model output to user's intent, e.g., being helpful and harmless. Recent alignment framework consists of two steps: supervised fine-tuning with demonstration data and preference learning with human preference data. Previous preference learning methods, such as RLHF and DPO, mainly focus on pair-wise preference data. However, in many real-world scenarios where human feedbacks are intrinsically point-wise, these methods will suffer from information loss or even fail. To fill this gap, in this paper, we first develop a preference learning method called point-wise DPO to tackle point-wise preference data. Further revelation on the connection between supervised fine-tuning and point-wise preference learning enables us to develop a unified framework for both human demonstration and point-wise preference data, which sheds new light on the construction of preference dataset. Extensive experiments on point-wise datasets with binary or continuous labels demonstrate the superior performance and efficiency of our proposed methods. A new dataset with high-quality demonstration samples on harmlessness is constructed and made publicly available.

Human albumin is essential for indicating the body's overall health. Accurately predicting plasma albumin levels and determining appropriate doses are urgent clinical challenges, particularly in critically ill patients, to maintain optimal blood levels. However, human albumin prediction is non-trivial that has to leverage the dynamics of biochemical markers as well as the experience of treating patients. Moreover, the problem of distribution shift is often encountered in real clinical data, which may lead to a decline in the model prediction performance and reduce the reliability of the model's application. In this paper, we propose a framework named Out-of-Distribution Generalized Dynamic Graph Neural Network for Human Albumin Prediction (DyG-HAP), which is able to provide accurate albumin predictions for Intensity Care Unit (ICU) patients during hospitalization. We first model human albumin prediction as a dynamic graph regression problem to model the dynamics and patient relationship. Then, we propose a disentangled dynamic graph attention mechanism to capture and disentangle the patterns whose relationship to labels under distribution shifts is invariant and variant respectively. Last, we propose an invariant dynamic graph regression method to encourage the model to rely on invariant patterns to make predictions. Moreover, we propose a dataset named Albumin level testing and nutritional dosing data for Intensive Care (ANIC) for evaluation. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of our method compared to several baseline methods in human albumin prediction.

Electroencephalography (EEG) is an objective tool for emotion recognition with promising applications. However, the scarcity of labeled data remains a major challenge in this field, limiting the widespread use of EEG-based emotion recognition. In this paper, a semi-supervised Dual-stream Self-Attentive Adversarial Graph Contrastive learning framework (termed as DS-AGC) is proposed to tackle the challenge of limited labeled data in cross-subject EEG-based emotion recognition. The DS-AGC framework includes two parallel streams for extracting non-structural and structural EEG features. The non-structural stream incorporates a semi-supervised multi-domain adaptation method to alleviate distribution discrepancy among labeled source domain, unlabeled source domain, and unknown target domain. The structural stream develops a graph contrastive learning method to extract effective graph-based feature representation from multiple EEG channels in a semi-supervised manner. Further, a self-attentive fusion module is developed for feature fusion, sample selection, and emotion recognition, which highlights EEG features more relevant to emotions and data samples in the labeled source domain that are closer to the target domain. Extensive experiments conducted on two benchmark databases (SEED and SEED-IV) using a semi-supervised cross-subject leave-one-subject-out cross-validation evaluation scheme show that the proposed model outperforms existing methods under different incomplete label conditions (with an average improvement of 5.83% on SEED and 6.99% on SEED-IV), demonstrating its effectiveness in addressing the label scarcity problem in cross-subject EEG-based emotion recognition.