Modern dynamic systems, such as transportation networks and IoT infrastructures, generate massive volumes of interrelated temporal data represented as temporal graphs. Conventional methods – like clustering, statistical thresholds, and classical time series analysis – often fail to account for the spatial-temporal dependencies inherent in these systems, leading to high false positive rates or missed complex anomalies. In this paper, we propose a novel anomaly detection approach that combines Temporal Graph Neural Networks (TGNN) with Autoencoders. The method utilizes TGNN to extract robust node representations by capturing both local connectivity and temporal evolution, while an autoencoder is trained to reconstruct normal node behavior. Anomalies are subsequently identified through significant reconstruction errors, which serve as indicators of deviations from typical patterns. Experimental evaluations on the real-world PeMSD7 dataset demonstrate that the proposed TGNN + Autoencoder method improves detection accuracy by 17.33% compared to traditional methods, reduces false positives by 4.71%, and achieves a 6.02% higher F1-score relative to using TGNN or autoencoder individually. These results underline the practical relevance of our approach for real-time monitoring of transportation networks, while also contributing theoretically to the integration of spatial and temporal features in anomaly detection.
Y. Wu, H. N. Dai, and H. Tang, "Graph neural networks for anomaly detection in industrial IoT," IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 212-223, Mar. 2021.
J. Yang and Z. Yue, "Learning hierarchical spatial-temporal graph representations for anomaly detection," IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, early access, 2022.
Y. Feng and J. Chen, "Full graph autoencoder for one-class group anomaly detection," IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 9, no. 5, pp. 4021-4030, May 2022.
Y. Lai, Y. Zhu, and L. Li, "STGLR: A spacecraft anomaly detection method using spatio-temporal graph learning," Sensors, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 1123-1137, 2025.
T. N. Kipf and M. Welling, "Variational Graph Autoencoders," 2016.
J. Wan, L. Cao, J. Bai, and J. Li, "Learning multiple types of features on a hybrid neural network for blockchain transaction behavior detection," SSRN, 2024.
M. W. Asres, C. W. Omlin, L. Wang, P. Parygin, and D. Yu, "Data quality monitoring through transfer learning on anomaly detection for the Hadron calorimeters," 2024.
J. Liu, X. Han, and X. Shang, "Spatial-Temporal Memories Enhanced Graph Autoencoder for Anomaly Detection in Dynamic Graphs," 2024.
J. Qi, C. Zeng, Z. Luan, S. Huang, S. Yang, and Y. Lu, "Beyond window-based detection: A graph-centric framework for discrete log anomaly detection," preprint, 2025.
M. Wen, Z. H. Chen, Y. Xiong, and Y. C. Zhang, "LGAT: A novel model for multivariate time series anomaly detection with improved anomaly transformer and learning graph structures," Neurocomputing, vol. 554, pp. 126-138, 2025.
R. Hosseini, F. Simini, V. Vishwanath et al., "A Deep Probabilistic Framework for Continuous Time Dynamic Graph Generation," 2024.
F. Xiao, S. Chen, Y. Ma et al., "SENTINEL: Insider threat detection based on multi-timescale user behavior interaction graph learning," IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, vol. 19, pp. 432-445, 2024.
J. Li, X. Deng, and B. Yao, "Enhanced anomaly detection of industrial control systems via graph-driven spatio-temporal adversarial deep support vector data description," Expert Systems with Applications, vol. 224, p. 119899, 2025.
J. Cao, X. Di, J. Li, K. Yu, and L. Zhao, "IoVST: An anomaly detection method for IoV based on spatiotemporal feature fusion," Future Generation Computer Systems, vol. 145, pp. 409-421, 2025.