Semantic Feature Segmentation for Interpretable Predictive Maintenance in Complex Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a semantic feature segmentation framework that decomposes monitored variables into meaningful groups, improving interpretability and maintaining predictive accuracy in complex system maintenance.

Contribution

It proposes a domain-informed segmentation method that isolates predictive and structural signals, enhancing interpretability without sacrificing performance.

Findings

Canonical space achieves lower predictive risk than residual space.

Semantic segmentation maintains interpretability and predictive performance.

Structural organization remains stable after redundancy reduction.

Abstract

Predictive maintenance in complex systems is often complicated by the heterogeneity and redundancy of monitored variables,which can obscure fault-relevant information and reduce model interpretability. This work proposes a semantic feature segmentation framework that decomposes the monitored feature space into a canonical component,expected to retain the dominant predictive information, and a residual component containing structurally peripheral signals. The segmentation is defined through domain informed criteria and sets up monitoring variables into functional groups reflecting operational mechanisms such as throughput,latency,pressure,network activity,and structural state. To evaluate the effectiveness of this decomposition, we adopt a predictive perspective in which expected predictive risk is used as an operational proxy for task-relevant information. Experimental results obtained through time-aware cross-validation show that the canonical space consistently achieves lower predictive risk than the residual space across multiple temporal configurations, indicating that the semantic segmentation concentrates the most relevant information for fault anticipation. In addition, the canonical segments exhibit significantly stronger intra-segment coherence than inter-segment dependence, and this structural organization remains stable after redundancy reduction. When compared with the full feature space and with a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) representation, the canonical space carries out comparable predictive performance and furthermore preserves the semantic meaning of the original variables. These findings suggest that semantic feature segmentation provides an interpretable and information-preserving decomposition of monitoring signals, enabling competitive predictive performance without sacrificing the operational interpretability required in predictive maintenance applications.