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Main Authors: Larosa, Francesca, Hoyas, Sergio, Conejero, H. Alberto, Garcia-Martinez, Javier, Nerini, Francesco Fuso, Vinuesa, Ricardo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.02191
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author Larosa, Francesca
Hoyas, Sergio
Conejero, H. Alberto
Garcia-Martinez, Javier
Nerini, Francesco Fuso
Vinuesa, Ricardo
author_facet Larosa, Francesca
Hoyas, Sergio
Conejero, H. Alberto
Garcia-Martinez, Javier
Nerini, Francesco Fuso
Vinuesa, Ricardo
contents As multiple crises threaten the sustainability of our societies and pose at risk the planetary boundaries, complex challenges require timely, updated, and usable information. Natural-language processing (NLP) tools enhance and expand data collection and processing and knowledge utilization capabilities to support the definition of an inclusive, sustainable future. In this work, we apply different NLP techniques, tools and approaches to climate and sustainability documents to derive policy-relevant and actionable measures. We focus on general and domain-specific large language models (LLMs) using a combination of static and prompt-based methods. We find that the use of LLMs is successful at processing, classifying and summarizing heterogeneous text-based data. However, we also encounter challenges related to human intervention across different workflow stages and knowledge utilization for policy processes. Our work presents a critical but empirically grounded application of LLMs to complex policy problems and suggests avenues to further expand Artificial Intelligence-powered computational social sciences.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_02191
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Large language models in climate and sustainability policy: limits and opportunities
Larosa, Francesca
Hoyas, Sergio
Conejero, H. Alberto
Garcia-Martinez, Javier
Nerini, Francesco Fuso
Vinuesa, Ricardo
Computers and Society
As multiple crises threaten the sustainability of our societies and pose at risk the planetary boundaries, complex challenges require timely, updated, and usable information. Natural-language processing (NLP) tools enhance and expand data collection and processing and knowledge utilization capabilities to support the definition of an inclusive, sustainable future. In this work, we apply different NLP techniques, tools and approaches to climate and sustainability documents to derive policy-relevant and actionable measures. We focus on general and domain-specific large language models (LLMs) using a combination of static and prompt-based methods. We find that the use of LLMs is successful at processing, classifying and summarizing heterogeneous text-based data. However, we also encounter challenges related to human intervention across different workflow stages and knowledge utilization for policy processes. Our work presents a critical but empirically grounded application of LLMs to complex policy problems and suggests avenues to further expand Artificial Intelligence-powered computational social sciences.
title Large language models in climate and sustainability policy: limits and opportunities
topic Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.02191