Unraveling Spatio-Temporal Foundation Models via the Pipeline Lens: A Comprehensive Review

作者：Yu Fang, Hao Miao, Yuxuan Liang, Liwei Deng, Yue Cui, Ximu Zeng, Yuyang Xia, Yan Zhao, Torben Bach Pedersen, C. N. Jensen, Xiaofang Zhou, Kai Zheng · 发表于：IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering · 年份：2026 · DOI：10.1109/tkde.2026.3651536 · 被引用次数：11 · 研究领域：Traffic Prediction and Management Techniques、Human Mobility and Location-Based Analysis、Machine Learning in Healthcare

Spatio-temporal data proliferates in numerous real-world domains, such as transportation, weather, and energy. Spatio-temporal deep learning models aims to utilize useful patterns in such data to support tasks like prediction, imputation, and anomaly detection. However, previousone-to-onedeep learning models designed for specific tasks typically require separate training for each use case, leading to increased computational and storage costs. To address this issue,one-to-manyspatio-temporal foundation models have emerged, offering a unified framework capable of solving multiple spatio-temporal tasks. These foundation models achieve remarkable success by learning general knowledge with spatio-temporal data or transferring the general capabilities of pre-trained language models. While previous surveys have explored spatio-temporal data and methodologies separately, they have ignored a comprehensive examination of how foundation models are designed, selected, pre-trained, and adapted. As a result, the overall pipeline for spatio-temporal foundation models remains unclear. To bridge this gap, we innovatively provide an up-to-date review of previous spatio-temporal foundation models from the pipeline perspective. The pipeline begins with an introduction to different types of spatio-temporal data, followed by details of data preprocessing and embedding techniques. The pipeline then presents a novel data property taxonomy to divide existing methods according to data sources and depe...