Survey Reviews Federated Causal Discovery and Inference for Data-Driven Decisions.

Xianjie Guo, Yuwei Wang, Guodu Xiang, Xiaoli Tang, Kui Yu, Han Yu, Qiang Yang· June 24, 2026 View original

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Summary

This paper provides a comprehensive survey of federated causal discovery (FCD) and inference (FCI), outlining methodologies, data partitioning, and structural knowledge acquisition. It formalizes their connection as a unified pipeline for privacy-preserving causal reasoning across distributed datasets.

Causal reasoning is crucial for informed decision-making, but privacy concerns and data distribution often hinder its application. Federated learning offers a solution by enabling collaborative analysis without centralizing raw data, leading to the emergence of federated causal discovery (FCD) and inference (FCI). This new survey aims to bridge the knowledge gap in this interdisciplinary field. The survey systematically reviews FCD solutions based on how structures are learned, data is partitioned, and structural knowledge is obtained. It also examines practical aspects like temporal dynamics and data heterogeneity. For FCI, methods are categorized by target estimand and estimation strategy. Crucially, the paper unifies FCD and FCI as complementary stages of a single federated causal reasoning pipeline, where FCD provides the necessary structural information for valid effect estimation in FCI. It concludes by identifying shared challenges such as privacy, communication efficiency, and theoretical guarantees, pointing to future research directions.

Why it matters

Professionals dealing with sensitive, distributed data can leverage federated causal reasoning to extract valuable insights and make data-driven decisions while adhering to privacy regulations. This survey provides a foundational understanding of the field and its practical applications.

How to implement this in your domain

  1. 1Evaluate existing federated learning frameworks for their suitability in causal discovery and inference tasks.
  2. 2Design privacy-preserving data sharing protocols that enable collaborative causal analysis without exposing raw data.
  3. 3Develop or adapt causal discovery algorithms to operate effectively within federated learning environments.
  4. 4Implement federated causal inference methods to estimate treatment effects from distributed, privacy-sensitive datasets.
  5. 5Assess the trade-offs between privacy, communication efficiency, and the accuracy of causal models in federated settings.

Who benefits

HealthcareBFSIGovernmentResearchRetail

Key takeaways

  • Federated causal reasoning enables data-driven decision-making with distributed, privacy-sensitive data.
  • The field combines federated learning with causal discovery and inference techniques.
  • FCD and FCI are complementary stages in a unified pipeline for robust causal analysis.
  • Key challenges include privacy, communication efficiency, and theoretical guarantees.

Original post by Xianjie Guo, Yuwei Wang, Guodu Xiang, Xiaoli Tang, Kui Yu, Han Yu, Qiang Yang

"arXiv:2606.23741v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Causal reasoning, which encompasses the discovery of causal structures and the inference of causal effects, is fundamental to data-driven decision making. In practice, data for reliable causal analysis are often distributed across i…"

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Originally posted by Xianjie Guo, Yuwei Wang, Guodu Xiang, Xiaoli Tang, Kui Yu, Han Yu, Qiang Yang on X · view source

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