Chain-of-Programming (CoP) : Empowering Large Language Models for Geospatial Code Generation

TL;DR

This paper introduces the Chain of Programming (CoP) framework, a systematic approach that enhances large language models' ability to generate accurate, executable geospatial code by decomposing the process into five detailed steps.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel CoP framework that improves geospatial code generation by integrating a multi-step process with knowledge retrieval and feedback, without requiring model fine-tuning.

Findings

Significantly improves code correctness and executability by 3.0% to 48.8%.

Outperforms other optimization methods in experiments.

Validated effectiveness through case studies in geospatial scenarios.

Abstract

With the rapid growth of interdisciplinary demands for geospatial modeling and the rise of large language models (LLMs), geospatial code generation technology has seen significant advancements. However, existing LLMs often face challenges in the geospatial code generation process due to incomplete or unclear user requirements and insufficient knowledge of specific platform syntax rules, leading to the generation of non-executable code, a phenomenon known as "code hallucination." To address this issue, this paper proposes a Chain of Programming (CoP) framework, which decomposes the code generation process into five steps: requirement analysis, algorithm design, code implementation, code debugging, and code annotation. The framework incorporates a shared information pool, knowledge base retrieval, and user feedback mechanisms, forming an end-to-end code generation flow from requirements to code without the need for model fine-tuning. Based on a geospatial problem classification framework and evaluation benchmarks, the CoP strategy significantly improves the logical clarity, syntactical correctness, and executability of the generated code, with improvements ranging from 3.0% to 48.8%. Comparative and ablation experiments further validate the superiority of the CoP strategy over other optimization approaches and confirm the rationality and necessity of its key components. Through case studies on building data visualization and fire data analysis, this paper demonstrates the application and effectiveness of CoP in various geospatial scenarios. The CoP framework offers a systematic, step-by-step approach to LLM-based geospatial code generation tasks, significantly enhancing code generation performance in geospatial tasks and providing valuable insights for code generation in other vertical domains.