Interactive Exploration and Explanation of Spatio- temporal Anomalies with Graph-LLM Integration

Juanpablo Heredia, Leighton Estrada-Rayme, Jeremy Matos-Cangalaya, Jorge Poco
Graphics, Patterns and Images (SIBGRAPI)
Interactive Exploration and Explanation of Spatio- temporal Anomalies with Graph-LLM Integration

The Visualization Tool: A) Scatter plot illustrating the correlation between crime counts and anomalies per node. B) Map layout of nodes; clicking selects a node and highlights its neighborhood. Node colors reflect crime count distribution (B.1). C) Explanation results from LLM. D) Time series of the selected node; hovering over detected anomalies shows a tooltip with local ST context (D.1). E) Subgraph representing the selected node neighborhood.

Publication Details

Venue
Graphics, Patterns and Images (SIBGRAPI)
Year
2025
Publication Date
September 20, 2025

Materials

Abstract

Understanding spatiotemporal anomalies is critical in domains such as urban safety, mobility, and environmental monitoring. These scenarios involve complex dynamics that are effectively modeled using graph-based representations, where the spatial structure is encoded through data connectivity, and each node corresponds to a time series. Anomaly detection in such data is crucial for identifying unusual or significant events, but it requires complex methods involving pattern recognition, prediction, and classification. Interpreting these anomalies remains challenging. To address this, we introduce an interactive system that combines spatiotemporal visualizations with Large Language Models (LLMs) to generate context-aware explanations by unifying temporal, spatial, and textual insights. We guide the LLM using a structured prompting strategy grounded in the data to reduce hallucinations and improve plausibility. As a demonstration of functionality, we analyze crime anomalies in São Paulo, uncovering links to events such as Carnival and religious holidays.

Cite this publication (BIBTEX)

@article{2025-AnomalyExplain, 
  title={Interactive Exploration and Explanation of Spatio- temporal Anomalies with Graph-LLM Integration}, 
  author={Juanpablo Heredia and Leighton Estrada-Rayme and Jeremy Matos-Cangalaya and Jorge Poco}, 
  journal={Graphics, Patterns and Images (SIBGRAPI) }, 
  year={2025}, 
  url={},
  date={2025-09-20}
}