Partial-Information Node-Level Forecasting in Directed Logistics Networks via Topology-Perturbation Encoding

Node-level cargo-volume forecasting in logistics sorting networks requires modeling temporal dynamics together with directed inter-node dependencies and planned topology perturbations. This study addresses 1-h-ahead forecasting under a partial-information boundary, where historical node volumes, the pre-change network structure, and planned route-topology changes are available before prediction, whereas continuous post-change dynamic edge weights and realized post-change graph states are unavailable. We propose a perturbation-aware framework that represents the sorting system as a directed network and integrates temporal features, pre-change structural descriptors, topology-change encodings, perturbation-response proxies, and similarity-assisted support for data-scarce nodes within a unified forecasting protocol. A shared random forest backbone is used only to assess the incremental value of these representations. Experiments on 57 sorting centers show that temporal dynamics dominate under stable-network conditions. Under topology perturbation, topology-change signals reduce test weighted absolute percentage error (WAPE) from 18.10% to 17.11%, and perturbation-response proxies further reduce it to 16.91%. For data-scarce nodes, similarity support reduces test WAPE from 29.43% to 26.68%, with consistent gains under 10%, 20%, and 30% sample-retention settings. These results suggest that the framework provides an interpretable and information-admissible representation strategy for node-level forecasting in directed networked systems.