Papers for

infrastructure monitoring teams

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Structural control improves sensor data recovery during long outages

CTRL-FM: Inference-Time Structural Control for Flow-Based Virtual Sensing under Long-Horizon Node Outages

Abstract: Long-horizon node outages are harder than conventional missing-value imputation because complete sensor trajectories remain unobserved for extended periods, while the usefulness of spatial and temporal dependencies varies across outage locations and operating regimes. Existing graph, diffusion, and flow-based methods typically impose a fixed structural bias, which can oversmooth abrupt changes or propagate errors from unreliable neighbors. We introduce CTRL-FM, an observation-preserving flow-matching framework that treats structural guidance as an outage-conditioned inference-time decision. A missing-only flow-matching backbone learns a conditional velocity field while keeping observed measurements exactly fixed. For each realized outage, CTRL-FM constructs self-supervised proxy outages from surviving measurements and uses their known values to select among uncontrolled, graph-dominant, temporal-dominant, and balanced control policies. The selected policy is locally modulated by graph and temporal reliability estimated exclusively from surviving observations, while boundary-anchored trends provide structural guidance. Control is applied only to missing entries and is rejected when proxy evidence does not sufficiently improve over uncontrolled sampling. Across PeMS08, METR-LA, Air-36, and AQI, CTRL-FM achieves the strongest overall performance under 30% and 60% node outages. Stress tests with up to 75% sensor loss further show graceful degradation and consistent gains over training-time and fixed structural control. These results demonstrate that validating, selecting, and locally adapting structural guidance for each realized outage is more effective than imposing a single global structural prior.

Wed 21 OctMachine Learning
The gist
Sensors sometimes go offline for a long time, making it hard to guess what their readings should have been. Existing methods assume a fixed pattern in how sensor data behaves, which can cause mistakes when conditions change suddenly. The authors developed CTRL-FM, a method that adapts its approach depending on which sensors are offline, using information from working sensors to decide how best to fill in missing data. This flexible approach keeps available sensor readings unchanged and picks the best way to guess missing ones. Tests show this method works better than others, even when many sensors fail at the same time.
Open → 2610.30362v1

Edge-based Katz centralities speed up analysis of changing spatial networks

Edge-based Katz centralities for spatio-temporal multiplex networks

Abstract: Katz centrality is a well-established measure to identify and rank the most important nodes in complex networks by means of a linear system solve. Recent works have developed notions of Katz centrality for temporal, i.e., time-evolving networks. Their drawback is that small changes in the network structure may drastically change centralities across large parts of the network. Moreover, an unproportional effort in the network science community has been devoted to the study of node-based quantities while edge-based measures are far less explored. In this manuscript, we introduce a novel failure-aware temporal multiplex network model for computing edge-based Katz centralities for spatial networks. This class of networks admits the use of the line graph as network representation. We use a block-triangular and -banded supra-adjacency matrix representation, modeling inter-layer connections as low-rank matrices, which assigns a spatially constrained emphasis on up- or downdated edges. These could represent, e.g., breakages of water/gas pipes or obstructions in street networks in real-time infrastructure monitoring applications. We analyze the structure of the of the block matrix inverse with respect to entry decay in the blocks above the block-diagonal. This gives rise to two truncation approaches that allow drastic computational runtime reductions at the cost of introducing a controlled truncation error. Numerical experiments on a range of real-world spatio-temporal networks of size up to $2\cdot 10^8$ illustrate accuracy and efficiency with runtime gains of up to a factor of $679$.

Mon 21 SeptSocial and Information Networks
The gist
Katz centrality is a way to find important parts in a network, like streets or pipes. Existing methods struggle when networks change quickly. The authors created a new approach that focuses on edges (connections) instead of just nodes (points), making it better for networks that change over time across different layers or locations. Their method reduces the computing time a lot while still being accurate, helping monitor real-world infrastructure in real time.
Open → 2609.24638v1

Foundation models improve global critical infrastructure classification accuracy

Infra-Bench CLS: A Global, Open-Source Benchmark for Critical Infrastructure Classification with Earth Observation Foundation Models

Abstract: Critical infrastructure location data is often incomplete and unevenly distributed globally, especially in developing regions. Earth observation foundation models are proposed as a new step in enabling us to more efficiently understand the natural and built environment, raising questions as to their effectiveness in performing challenging downstream tasks. Yet, foundation models remain largely untested for detecting and classifying the facility-scale critical infrastructure that underpins a range of important societal and economic functions. Subsequently, Infra-Bench CLS is introduced as a benchmark to test foundation models on 18,756 Sentinel-1 SAR and Sentinel-2 multispectral facility-scale critical infrastructure asset images covering seven continents and 13 infrastructure classes, with results reported for the 10 retained classes. Using linear probing and fine-tuning for two training dataset levels (1.0x and 0.3x), seven foundation models are evaluated (SatlasPretrain S2, SatlasPretrain S1, CROMA, Prithvi-EO-2.0, AlphaEarth Foundations, OlmoEarth v1.1-Base, and DINOv3 ViT-L/16). When comparing macro F1 scores to a ResNet-18 supervised baseline of 39.2 percent, the best foundation model achieved 57.9 percent, a 48 percent improvement. Top performing classes were airports (F1 85.3 percent), train stations (F1 82.1 percent), and data centers (F1 77.6 percent). By contrast, many of the power sector classes perform poorly (F1 27.5-46.2 percent). These findings suggest foundation models can enable superior critical infrastructure classification, but future work should evaluate performance on higher-resolution imagery, particularly for poorly performing sectors, such as power.

Tue 8 SeptComputer Vision and Pattern RecognitionMachine Learning
The gist
It can be hard to know where important buildings like airports and train stations are around the world, especially in developing countries. The authors created a new test called Infra-Bench CLS to see how well powerful satellite image models can recognize different types of critical infrastructure, like airports, train stations, and power stations. They found these models did much better than older methods on most facility types but struggled on some power-related facilities. This work shows these new models can help find and classify key infrastructure globally using satellite images.
Open → 2609.09482v1

SeisBench DAS standardizes machine learning for fibre optic sensing

SeisBench DAS: A machine learning framework for Distributed Acoustic Sensing

Abstract: Fibre optic sensing, such as distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), has become a widespread technology for geophysical studies. To process the large-scale datasets produced by DAS, several machine learning methods have been proposed. However, without standardization of data and models, these methods lack comparability and interoperability. This introduces a gap between model developers and practitioners analyzing DAS data and inhibits adoption of deep learning for DAS. To address these limitations, here we present SeisBench DAS, an extension to the SeisBench library for machine learning in seismology. SeisBench DAS defines standard formats for DAS benchmark datasets, including standardised metadata and labels, and DAS models. It builds on the xdas framework for data ingestion and virtual array handling, and on PyTorch for reading and applying the machine learning models. Importantly, SeisBench provides an engine to efficiently apply deep learning models to diverse formats of DAS data, bridging the gap between model developers and practitioners. SeisBench DAS is designed as an open and extensible framework, allowing to easily incorporate future developments in deep learning for DAS.

Mon 7 SeptMachine Learning
The gist
Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) uses fiber optic cables to detect vibrations, producing huge amounts of data. The authors created SeisBench DAS, a tool that makes it easier to use and compare machine learning models on DAS data by standardizing the data format and models. This helps experts who build models and those who analyze data work together more effectively. The tool is open and can incorporate new machine learning advances in the future.
Open → 2609.07558v1