DoFlow: Causal Generative Flows for Interventional and Counterfactual Time-Series Prediction

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2511.02137v1
• Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2025 00:01:25 GMT
• Title: DoFlow: Causal Generative Flows for Interventional and Counterfactual Time-Series Prediction
• Authors: Dongze Wu, Feng Qiu, Yao Xie,
• Abstract summary: DoFlow is a flow based generative model defined over a causal DAG that delivers coherent observational and interventional predictions.<n>DoFlow provides explicit likelihoods of future trajectories, enabling principled anomaly detection.
• Score: 16.417858983587248
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Time-series forecasting increasingly demands not only accurate observational predictions but also causal forecasting under interventional and counterfactual queries in multivariate systems. We present DoFlow, a flow based generative model defined over a causal DAG that delivers coherent observational and interventional predictions, as well as counterfactuals through the natural encoding and decoding mechanism of continuous normalizing flows (CNFs). We also provide a supporting counterfactual recovery result under certain assumptions. Beyond forecasting, DoFlow provides explicit likelihoods of future trajectories, enabling principled anomaly detection. Experiments on synthetic datasets with various causal DAG and real world hydropower and cancer treatment time series show that DoFlow achieves accurate system-wide observational forecasting, enables causal forecasting over interventional and counterfactual queries, and effectively detects anomalies. This work contributes to the broader goal of unifying causal reasoning and generative modeling for complex dynamical systems.

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