Planetary Prediction Engine: Autonomous Geospatial Prediction via Intelligent Data Selection and Foundation Model Embeddings
Organizations: Google Research · Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale, Democratic Republic of Congo · University of Oxford
Abstract
Addressing critical global challenges, from food security and disaster risk to disease outbreaks and socio-economic vulnerability, demands high-fidelity geospatial modeling. However, building predictive planetary models remains bottlenecked by a fragmented data ecosystem, requiring manual data retrieval, multimodal data curation and fusion along with iterative model selection. We present the Planetary Prediction Engine (PPE), an autonomous AI system that executes this end-to-end workflow directly from natural-language queries. PPE synthesizes multimodal datasets on the fly, retrieving spatiotemporally relevant covariates across open-web and Earth observation platforms (Data Commons, Google Earth Engine) and fusing them with geospatial foundation model embeddings (PDFM, AlphaEarth). Simultaneously, it searches over task-tailored model architecture families with automated overfitting guards. Across diverse tasks, geographies, and scientific domains, PPE consistently outperforms state-of-the-art or manually tuned expert baselines. For US spatial regression, PPE improves mean across 21 CDC health indicators (76.8% vs. 60.0%), FEMA national risk indices (64.9% vs. 60.0%), and the Social Vulnerability Index (66.2% vs. 58.6%). For spatial downscaling in data-scarce settings, PPE integrates localized proxies to double baseline accuracy in Nigerian food security indicators ( of 66.1% vs. 31.5%). For epidemiological nowcasting of the 2026 DRC Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak, PPE achieves a Recall@10 of 83.3% (identifying 15 of 18 newly invaded health zones across five weekly forecasts), a +10.3 percentage-point improvement over the public state-of-the-art modeling (~73%). By combining autonomous multimodal planetary data discovery with targeted model optimization, PPE lowers the technical barrier to planetary-scale analytics, enabling rapid, customized, expert-level deployment.
Figures & tables
| ML Paradigm | Geographic Scope | Thematic Domain | Benchmark Dataset | Prediction Targets | Train / Test Granularity | Train / Test Size |
| Nowcasting | Global South (DRC) | Humanitarian Epidemics | DRC Ebola Outbreak Tracking | one-week confirmed caseloads increase | Admin 3 health zones | 7 weeks 519 zones / 5 weeks 519 zones |
| Super-Resolution Downscaling | Global South (Nigeria) | Food Security | Nigeria FCG Insecurity | FCG score | Admin 1 Admin 2 (LGA) | 30 states 40 months / 581 LGAs 40 months |
| Global North (US) | Social Vulnerability | SVI | 5 index scores | County ZCTA | 3k / 33k | |
| Spatial Regression | Global North (US) | Public Health | CDC Health | 21 health variables | Census Tract | 67k / 17k |
| Global North (US) | Environmental Risk | FEMA NRI | 21 risk scores | Census Tract | 67k / 17k | |
| Global North (US) | Social Vulnerability | SVI | 5 index scores | County | 2.4k / 0.6k |
| System | Feature Configuration | Data Preprocessing (DP) | Recall@10 (%)[95% CI] |
| Baseline/ SOTA (Bayesian modeling) | Baseline Signals | Baseline DP | |
| PPE (Covariates) | Baseline Signals + Geospatial Covariates | Baseline DP + PPE automatic tabular DP | 77.8 [54.8, 91.0] |
| PPE (Full Stack) | Baseline signals + PPE automatic full data selection | Baseline DP + PPE automatic full DP | 83.3 [60.8, 94.2] |
| System | Feature Configuration | Overall [95%CI] (%) |
| Baseline | Macro-Covariates + Interpolation | 31.5 [19.0, 39.3] |
| PPE (Covariates) | Macro-Covariates + nighttime lights (NTL) | 49.8 [39.8, 57.9] |
| Macro-Covariates + vegetation | 60.1 [40.3, 72.8] | |
| PPE (Full Stack) | Macro-Covariates + vegetation + NTL + Automatic Intelligent Selection | 66.1 [55.9, 72.8] |
| System | Feature Configuration | Mean [95% CI] |
| Baseline | Macro-Covariates + Interpolation | 11.0 [10.0, 12.3] |
| PPE (Covariates) | Geospatial Covariates | 25.6 [24.3, 26.9] |
| PPE (Embeddings) | PDFM | 36.9 [36.0,37.9] |
| PPE (Full Stack) | Covariates + PDFM | 37.6 [36.7, 38.6] |
| System | Feature Configuration | Mean [95% CI] (%) |
| Baseline / SOTA | Manual Expert Pipeline (PDFM + AEF) | 60 |
| PPE (Embeddings) | PDFM | 59.7 [58.6, 60.9] |
| PDFM+AEF | 61.8 [60.6, 62.9] | |
| PPE (Full Stack) | PDFM + AEF + Data Commons Covariates | 76.8 [76.1, 77.6] |
| System | 1. Socioeconomic & Composite | 2. Atmospheric & Climatological | 3. Geophysical & Hydrological | Full Nationwide Suite |
| Target Count | 4 | 10 | 6 | 20 |
| PDFM + AEF Manual expert Mean (%) | 61.1 | 64.6 | 51.1 | 59.9 |
| PDFM + AEF + DC (Feature ablation) Mean (%) | 66.9 [66.2, 67.5] | 64.3 [63.6, 65.0] | 51.7 [49.3, 53.7] | 61.1 [60.2, 61.7] |
| PDFM + AEF + DC + Intelligent Data Selection Mean (%) | 69.4 [68.8, 70.0] | 68.3 [67.5, 68.9] | 56.2 [54.1, 57.8] | 64.9 [64.1, 65.5] |
| System | Feature Configuration | Mean [95% CI] (%) |
| Baseline | Foundation Model Signals | 60.3 [55.2, 64.9] |
| PPE (Covariates) | Geospatial Covariates | 50.2 [44.2, 55.6] |
| PPE (Full Stack) | Covariates + PDFM | 66.2 [61.6, 70.4] |
| Model | Class | Implementation | Key Hyperparams |
| linear | Linear | Scikit-Learn (Ridge, Lasso, ElasticNet) [ 57 ] | Regularization Type, Penalty , L1 ratio |
| boost | HistBoost, XGBoost [ 12 ] | Scikit-Learn HistGradientBoosting Regressor; xgboost.XGBRegressor | Learning rate, Max leaf nodes,Min samples per leaf, Loss Type,Max tree depth, # of estimators,Subsample, Regularization |
| mlp | MLPKeras | Keras | Hidden layer sizes, Dropout rate, Optimizer configs |
Appendix figures & tables9 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
| Covariate Category | Data Source / Provider | Key Variables & Dimensions Captured | Access Class |
| Socio-Demographic & Economic | Data Commons (Google Open Source) | Population density, household income trends, poverty rates, age/gender distributions, chronic disease rates. | Public (Open API & Free) |
| Ecological & Environmental | Google Earth Engine (EE) | Multi-spectral imagery (Sentinel-2, Landsat, MODIS), NDVI (vegetation), soil moisture, LST anomalies. | Public (Free for Research Use) |
| Infrastructure & Mobility | Google Maps Platform Insights | Aggregated Statistics on POIs | Public (GCP Commercial Billing) |
| Infrastructure & Mobility | OpenStreetMap (OSM) (via OCHA HDX) | Road network vectors, administrative boundary polygons, structural building footprints. | Public (Open Source / Free) |
| Meteorological | Open-Meteo / NOAA | Daily temperature, cumulative precipitation, relative humidity, wind velocity profiles. | Public (Open API / Free) |
| Foundation Model | Population Dynamics Foundation Model (PDFM) | AlphaEarth Foundation Model |
| Modality / Coverage | Socio-economic & Demographic (State, County, ZCTA, City) | Ecological & Remote Sensing (High-resolution satellite raster) |
| Dimension | 330 / 512 | 64 |
| Key Semantic Characteristics | Encodes latent population density, mobility, economic growth, and regional demographics. | Encodes multi-scale topography, vegetation canopy, land-use semantics, and terrain profiles. |
| Access Class | Pre-General Availability + Research Use | Publicly available |
| Dimension | Weight | Criteria & Point Allocations |
| Provenance & License | High (x5) | Institutional backing and license openness. Openly licensed data from established repositories (4 pts) → government/NGO open data (3 pts) → attribution-required academic data (2 pts) → restrictive or unknown license (0 pts). |
| Spatio-Temporal Fitness | Medium (x2) | Spatial coverage of the target area of interest and temporal overlap with the prediction window. |
| Signal Alignment | High (x3) | Degree to which the dataset directly addresses a signal from the Signal Guide: exact variable match (4 pts) → requires transformation (3 pts) → proxy coverage (2 pts) → tangential (0 pts). |
| Format & Quality | Low (x1) | Data readiness: structured and pre-parsed (4 pts) → standard interoperable format (2 pts) → legacy or malformed (0 pts). |
| Redundancy | Low (x1) | Whether the dataset provides unique coverage or duplicates a higher-scoring source for the same signal. |
| FEMA Target Variable | PDFM + AEF Manual expert Mean R² | PDFM + AEF + DC (Feature ablation) Mean R² [95% CI] | Data Common variables used (Comma-Separated Variables) |
| Social Vulnerability | 0.4824 | 0.6755 [0.6556, 0.6941] | Count_Person, BelowPovertyLevelInThePast12Months, Count_Household, HouseholderAge65OrMoreYears, SingleMotherFamilyHousehold, LimitedEnglishSpeakingHousehold, NoComputer, NoInternetAccess, With0AvailableVehicles, WithFoodStampsInThePast12Months, IncomeOfUpto10000USDollar, IncomeOf10000To14999USDollar, IncomeOf15000To19999USDollar, IncomeOf20000To24999USDollar, IncomeOf100000To124999USDollar, IncomeOf200000OrMoreUSDollar, Count_HousingUnit, Count_HousingUnit_Before1939DateBuilt |
| Resilience Score | 0.7402 | 0.7358 [0.7287, 0.7427] | Count_Person, BelowPovertyLevelInThePast12Months, Count_Household, HouseholderAge65OrMoreYears, SingleMotherFamilyHousehold, LimitedEnglishSpeakingHousehold, NoComputer, NoInternetAccess, With0AvailableVehicles, WithFoodStampsInThePast12Months, IncomeOfUpto10000USDollar, IncomeOf10000To14999USDollar, IncomeOf15000To19999USDollar, IncomeOf20000To24999USDollar, IncomeOf100000To124999USDollar, IncomeOf200000OrMoreUSDollar, Count_HousingUnit, Count_HousingUnit_Before1939DateBuilt |
| Composite Risk Score | 0.5983 | 0.6221 [0.6078, 0.6335] | Count_Person, BelowPovertyLevelInThePast12Months, Count_Household, HouseholderAge65OrMoreYears, SingleMotherFamilyHousehold, LimitedEnglishSpeakingHousehold, NoComputer, NoInternetAccess, With0AvailableVehicles, WithFoodStampsInThePast12Months, IncomeOfUpto10000USDollar, IncomeOf10000To14999USDollar, IncomeOf15000To19999USDollar, IncomeOf20000To24999USDollar, IncomeOf100000To124999USDollar, IncomeOf200000OrMoreUSDollar, Count_HousingUnit, Count_HousingUnit_Before1939DateBuilt |
| Expected Annual Loss | 0.6227 | 0.6423 [0.6319, 0.6531] | Count_Person, BelowPovertyLevelInThePast12Months, Count_Household, HouseholderAge65OrMoreYears, SingleMotherFamilyHousehold, LimitedEnglishSpeakingHousehold, NoComputer, NoInternetAccess, With0AvailableVehicles, WithFoodStampsInThePast12Months, IncomeOfUpto10000USDollar, IncomeOf10000To14999USDollar, IncomeOf15000To19999USDollar, IncomeOf20000To24999USDollar, IncomeOf100000To124999USDollar, IncomeOf200000OrMoreUSDollar, Count_HousingUnit, Count_HousingUnit_Before1939DateBuilt |
| FEMA Target Variable | PDFM + AEF Manual expert Mean R² | PDFM + AEF + DC (Feature ablation) Mean R² [95% CI] | Data Common variables used (Comma-Separated Variables) |
| Tornado Risk | 0.7543 | 0.7542 [0.7468, 0.7617] | None |
| Hail Risk | 0.5949 | 0.5976 [0.5807, 0.6138] | None |
| Strong Wind Risk | 0.7339 | 0.7271 [0.7179, 0.7362] | None |
| Lightning Risk | 0.4884 | 0.4918 [0.4758, 0.5090] | None |
| Drought Risk | 0.6700 | 0.6866 [0.6332, 0.7323] | None |
| Heat Wave Risk | 0.6336 | 0.6350 [0.6193, 0.6489] | None |
| FEMA Target Variable | PDFM + AEF Manual expert Mean R² | PDFM + AEF + DC (Feature ablation) Mean R² [95% CI] | Data Common variables used (Comma-Separated Variables) |
| Coastal Flooding | 0.3786 | 0.3840 [0.3394, 0.4240] | None |
| Riverine Flooding | 0.2930 | 0.2935 [0.2695, 0.3179] | None |
| Hurricane Risk | 0.8270 | 0.8124 [0.8011, 0.8232] | None |
| Earthquake Risk | 0.8606 | 0.8608 [0.8540, 0.8672] | None |
| Landslide Risk | 0.5614 | 0.5624 [0.5339, 0.5887] | None |
| Avalanche Risk | 0.1474 | 0.1866 [0.0572, 0.2947] | Count_Person, BelowPovertyLevelInThePast12Months, Count_Household, HouseholderAge65OrMoreYears, SingleMotherFamilyHousehold, LimitedEnglishSpeakingHousehold, NoComputer, NoInternetAccess, With0AvailableVehicles, WithFoodStampsInThePast12Months, IncomeOfUpto10000USDollar, IncomeOf10000To14999USDollar, IncomeOf15000To19999USDollar, IncomeOf20000To24999USDollar, IncomeOf100000To124999USDollar, IncomeOf200000OrMoreUSDollar, Count_HousingUnit, Count_HousingUnit_Before1939DateBuilt |
| FEMA Target Variable | PDFM + AEF + DC Feature Ablation Mean R² | PDFM + AEF + Discovered DC Variables Intelligent Feature Selection Mean R² [95% CI] | Discovered / Selected External Variables (Sourced Non-Linearly) |
| Social Vulnerability | 0.6755 | 0.6773 [0.6698, 0.6869] | Count_Person, HouseholderAge65OrMoreYears, SingleMotherFamilyHousehold |
| Resilience Score | 0.7358 | 0.7258 [0.7062, 0.7348] | LimitedEnglishSpeakingHousehold, Median household income |
| Composite Risk Score | 0.6221 | 0.6749 [0.6641, 0.6861] | WithFoodStampsInThePast12Months, Health insurance rates |
| Expected Annual Loss | 0.6423 | 0.6974 [0.6888, 0.7055] | Count_HousingUnit_Before1939DateBuilt, Poverty Index metrics |
| FEMA Target Variable | PDFM + AEF + DC Feature Ablation Mean R² | PDFM + AEF + Discovered DC Variables Intelligent Feature Selection Mean R² [95% CI] | Discovered / Selected External Variables (Sourced Non-Linearly) |
| Tornado Risk | 0.7542 | 0.9168 [0.9123, 0.9208] | Agricultural vs Developed land ratios, Surface terrain elevation, Annual average precipitation, Distance to coast lines, Relative humidity |
| Hail Risk | 0.5976 | 0.8656 [0.8540, 0.8807] | Cloud Cover fractions, Vegetation indices (NDVI) variance, Land surface temperature gradients, Distance to major water bodies |
| Strong Wind Risk | 0.7339 | 0.6891 [0.6631, 0.7117] | NOAA Convective Storm Frequencies, Spherical coordinates (lat/lon 3D embeddings), Atmospheric pressure gradient proxies |
| Lightning Risk | 0.4884 | 0.6607 [0.6051, 0.7055] | US Drought Monitor Palmer Indices, Agricultural land fraction, Water body area ratio, Mean annual precipitation |
| Drought Risk | 0.6700 | 0.8711 [0.8648, 0.8775] | NOAA High Wind Event frequencies, Coastal proximity, Terrain elevation, Topographic wind exposure |
| Heat Wave Risk | 0.6336 | 0.5964 [0.5790, 0.6139] | US Census Educational attainment, Health insurance coverage fraction, Median household income, Internet access |
| FEMA Target Variable | PDFM + AEF + DC Feature Ablation Mean R² | PDFM + AEF + Discovered DC Variables Intelligent Feature Selection Mean R² [95% CI] | Discovered / Selected External Variables (Sourced Non-Linearly) |
| Coastal Flooding | 0.3786 | 0.5047 [0.4882, 0.5202] | USGS Fault Line distance proxies + AlphaEarth seismic geodynamics embeddings |
| Riverine Flooding | 0.2930 | 0.3144 [0.2924, 0.3377] | Coastal proximity buffer, Historical tropical cyclone track density, Elevation |
| Hurricane Risk | 0.8270 | 0.7729 [0.7650, 0.7809] | AlphaEarth satellite foundation embeddings + discovered vegetative fuel covariates |
| Earthquake Risk | 0.8606 | 0.7992 [0.7923, 0.8059] | Mean minimum temperature, Sub-zero degree day counts, Latitude spatial embeddings |
| Landslide Risk | 0.5614 | 0.7547 [0.7385, 0.7705] | US Census Gazetteer spatial geometry, Census Tract Housing Age, Income distributions, Building Density, Population Density |
| Avalanche Risk | 0.1474 | 0.6882 [0.6767, 0.6988] | NOAA Severe Hail probability metrics, Convective available potential energy (CAPE) proxies, Terrain elevation |
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