Select, then Balance: Exploring Exogenous Variable Modeling of Spatio-Temporal Forecasting

Abstract

Spatio-temporal (ST) forecasting is critical for dynamic systems, yet existing methods predominantly rely on modeling a limited set of observed target variables. In this paper, we present the first systematic exploration of exogenous variable modeling for ST forecasting, a topic long overlooked in this field. We identify two core challenges in integrating exogenous variables: the inconsistent effects of distinct variables on the target system and the imbalance effects between historical and future data. To address these, we propose ExoST, a simple yet effective exogenous variable modeling general framework highly compatible with existing ST backbones that follows a "select, then balance" paradigm. Specifically, we design a latent space gated expert module to dynamically select and recompose salient signals from fused exogenous information. Furthermore, a siamese dual-branch backbone architecture captures dynamic patterns from the recomposed past and future representations, integrating them via a context-aware weighting mechanism to ensure dynamic balance. Extensive experiments on real-world datasets demonstrate the ExoST's effectiveness, universality, robustness, and efficiency.