CLAM: Causal Spatial Disaggregation to Infer Local Effects From Coarse Data

Abstract

Learning fine-grained spatial patterns from coarse-resolution data is challenging, especially in causal settings where high-resolution effects must be inferred from aggregated interventions and outcomes. We introduce CLAM, a method for estimating localized causal effects from coarse observations by exploiting high-resolution contextual covariates that modulate these effects. By jointly learning the causal mechanism and a disaggregation mapping, CLAM captures interactions that are missed when addressing these problems independently. The method supports localized effect estimation, counterfactual reasoning, and principled outcome disaggregation, and reliably captures spatially varying causal effects across diverse settings. This is particularly relevant for applications such as public health and environmental policy, where decisions are made at broad scales despite substantial local heterogeneity. Code is available at https://github.com/gerritgr/clam