Spatial Heterogeneity in Climate Risk and Human Flourishing: An Exploration with Generative AI

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Iacus, Stefano Maria, Qi, Haodong, Jain, Devika
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
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author Iacus, Stefano Maria
Qi, Haodong
Jain, Devika
author_facet Iacus, Stefano Maria
Qi, Haodong
Jain, Devika
contents Recent advances in Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), enable scalable extraction of spatial information from unstructured text and offer new methodological opportunities for studying climate geography. This study develops a spatial framework to examine how cumulative climate risk relates to multidimensional human flourishing across U.S. counties. High-resolution climate hazard indicators are integrated with a Human Flourishing Geographic Index (HFGI), an index derived from classification of 2.6 billion geotagged tweets using fine-tuned open-source Large Language Models (LLMs). These indicators are aggregated to the US county-level and mapped to a structural equation model to infer overall climate risk and human flourishing dimensions, including expressed well-being, meaning and purpose, social connectedness, psychological distress, physical condition, economic stability, religiosity, character and virtue, and institutional trust. The results reveal spatially heterogeneous associations between greater cumulative climate risk and lower levels of expressed human flourishing, with coherent spatial patterns corresponding to recurrent exposure to heat, flooding, wind, drought, and wildfire hazards. The study demonstrates how Generative AI can be combined with latent construct modeling for geographical analysis and for spatial knowledge extraction.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_20880
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Spatial Heterogeneity in Climate Risk and Human Flourishing: An Exploration with Generative AI
Iacus, Stefano Maria
Qi, Haodong
Jain, Devika
Applications
Machine Learning
Recent advances in Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), enable scalable extraction of spatial information from unstructured text and offer new methodological opportunities for studying climate geography. This study develops a spatial framework to examine how cumulative climate risk relates to multidimensional human flourishing across U.S. counties. High-resolution climate hazard indicators are integrated with a Human Flourishing Geographic Index (HFGI), an index derived from classification of 2.6 billion geotagged tweets using fine-tuned open-source Large Language Models (LLMs). These indicators are aggregated to the US county-level and mapped to a structural equation model to infer overall climate risk and human flourishing dimensions, including expressed well-being, meaning and purpose, social connectedness, psychological distress, physical condition, economic stability, religiosity, character and virtue, and institutional trust. The results reveal spatially heterogeneous associations between greater cumulative climate risk and lower levels of expressed human flourishing, with coherent spatial patterns corresponding to recurrent exposure to heat, flooding, wind, drought, and wildfire hazards. The study demonstrates how Generative AI can be combined with latent construct modeling for geographical analysis and for spatial knowledge extraction.
title Spatial Heterogeneity in Climate Risk and Human Flourishing: An Exploration with Generative AI
topic Applications
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.20880