用大模型分析气候政策,发现宣布紧急状态的政府行动更积极。
Computational Analysis of Climate Policy
- 用GPT-4构建政策分析系统,自动评估地方政府气候文件。
- 宣布气候紧急状态的地区更可能制定近期、具体的气候政策。
- 适合政策研究者和关注气候治理的机构参考。
本论文采用计算方法研究气候紧急运动对地方政府气候政策的影响。该运动通过气候紧急声明(CED)推动地方层面加速气候行动,促使议会将气候变化视为紧急事项。为评估大语言模型处理复杂政策问题的能力,作者构建并配置了名为PALLM的系统,基于OpenAI的GPT-4模型,应用气候应急响应框架分析政策文件。通过11个维多利亚州地方政府的案例验证,政策制定者对PALLM输出的认同度较高。进一步大规模分析显示,已通过CED的地方政府更倾向于制定近期且聚焦气候的政策,在紧迫性、优先级及公平与社会正义方面关注度更高。研究指出,大模型可实现政策文档的规模化评估,虽存在溯源不可靠等局限,但为政策研究提供了新范式。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
This thesis explores the impact of the Climate Emergency movement on local government climate policy, using computational methods. The Climate Emergency movement sought to accelerate climate action at local government level through the mechanism of Climate Emergency Declarations (CEDs), resulting in a series of commitments from councils to treat climate change as an emergency. With the aim of assessing the potential of current large language models to answer complex policy questions, I first built and configured a system named PALLM (Policy Analysis with a Large Language Model), using the OpenAI model GPT-4. This system is designed to apply a conceptual framework for climate emergency response plans to a dataset of climate policy documents. I validated the performance of this system with the help of local government policymakers, by generating analyses of the climate policies of 11 local governments in Victoria and assessing the policymakers' level of agreement with PALLM's responses. Having established that PALLM's performance is satisfactory, I used it to conduct a large-scale analysis of current policy documents from local governments in the state of Victoria, Australia. This thesis presents the methodology and results of this analysis, comparing the results for councils which have passed a CED to those which did not. This study finds that GPT-4 is capable of high-level policy analysis, with limitations including a lack of reliable attribution, and can also enable more nuanced analysis by researchers. Its use in this research shows that councils which have passed a CED are more likely to have a recent and climate-specific policy, and show more attention to urgency, prioritisation, and equity and social justice, than councils which have not. It concludes that the ability to assess policy documents at scale opens up exciting new opportunities for policy researchers.
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