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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">ISPRS Ann. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9050</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-annals-XII-4-W2-2026-155-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>From Compression to Execution: What Helps Large Language Models Digest Urban Graphs for Spatial QA?</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Oucheikh</surname>
<given-names>Rachid</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9996-9759</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Mansourian</surname>
<given-names>Ali</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences (MGeo), Lund University, Sölvegatan 12, SE-223 62, Lund, Sweden</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>28</day>
<month>09</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>XII-4/W2-2026</volume>
<fpage>155</fpage>
<lpage>162</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Rachid Oucheikh</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XII-4-W2-2026/155/2026/isprs-annals-XII-4-W2-2026-155-2026.html">This article is available from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XII-4-W2-2026/155/2026/isprs-annals-XII-4-W2-2026-155-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XII-4-W2-2026/155/2026/isprs-annals-XII-4-W2-2026-155-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XII-4-W2-2026/155/2026/isprs-annals-XII-4-W2-2026-155-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Urban graphs are central to smart-city analytics, but they remain difficult for language-guided models, specifically LLMs, to use effectively in spatial question answering. This paper studies how urban graph structure can be exposed to such models through different graph-language interaction designs. We construct a controlled multi-task urban graph QA benchmark over three cities that covers adjacency count, adjacency binary, reachability, shortest path, and centrality, and compare seven mechanisms spanning compression, memory, retrieval, execution, and structural reasoning, alongside text-only and GNN-only baselines. Within this benchmark, methods using more explicit structural evidence generally outperform compression and memory-based approaches: Path Tokens reaches 78.1% average accuracy, Graph Tool 87.4%, and Counterfactual 71.7%, while centrality remains the most difficult task. These results should be interpreted as a comparison of graph-language interaction designs rather than a fully input-matched ablation, but they suggest that exposing task-relevant structural information is an important factor for urban spatial QA.</p>
</abstract>
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</article-meta>
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