Dr Arminel Lovell on our new adaptation topic and updates to the Climate Litigation Database.

Using search engines to find basic information and resources is second nature to the vast majority of those with internet access, so much so that it could be taken for granted by some people just how intricate the data science happening behind the scenes to enable this is. Our policy and data science teams have been working tirelessly on launching and improving our new ‘topics’ function, which was introduced last year to help researchers not only surface useful documents using direct keyword search, but to then connect their search to the rich array of terminology surrounding those key topics. 

This week, we spent a few minutes speaking to our Senior Knowledge Manager Arminel to better understand the new topics introduced on the Climate Policy Radar app, as well the broader roll out of topics across the Climate LItigation Database. Arminel joined us 9 months ago and has 9 years’ experience as a researcher in climate change*.  

Arminel, can you first tell us a bit more about what topics are and how they can be used?

Of course. Let’s take one of our most popular searches as an example, climate adaptation, which we’ve seen an increasing global focus on as the impacts of climate change become clearer and more severe.

In the past, if a researcher wanted to find where adaptation is mentioned in a policy document, they would probably ctrl+F through the document for the word “adaptation”, and then maybe they would ctrl+F through the document again for the word “climate resilience”, and then again for “reducing climate impacts”. And then they would have to repeat those searches in every other document they are interested in reading. This takes time and will most likely result in some relevant mentions and passages of text being missed.  

Our new topics search will bring up mentions of the word adaptation as well as a broad range of terminology on adaptation and resilience actions, technologies and enabling factors. 

Users can search for mentions of adaptation and resilience actions across a range of sectors and themes like:

• Water security

• Coastal and marine areas

• Health

• Infrastructure/built environment

• Socioeconomic issues inc. livelihoods

• Preservations of cultural and natural heritage including indigenous knowledge and UNESCO sites. 

As well as enabling factors that make it easier to adapt to the impacts of climate change such as:

• Risk assessment

• Finance

• Planning and policy

The aim is to allow a much richer search experience on key topics, such as adaptation, at the click of a button, speeding up time-to-insight.

That makes so much sense. I’d never thought about the intricacies that lead to a great search experience. What about then when applying these topics to one of the products we power, like the Climate Litigation Database?

Our topics function enables better, enriched search experiences across text-based documents that we believe will save researchers a lot of time. They can be applied to laws, policies, climate finance reports, but also to litigation. 

For example, Sabin Center’s Climate Litigation Database has over 4000 cases in it covering a broad range of themes including fossil fuels and renewable energy.

By applying our fossil fuels topic, users can not only find cases that directly mention fossil fuels, but that also mention the spectrum of energy sources that fall under that definition, such as coal, oil, gas etc.

Amazing. How do you ensure this work stays intrinsically linked to real-world uses and expertise?

We build our topics based on globally recognised definitions and frameworks and in consultation with  experts and data users across policy, litigation, academia and finance. For example, for our adaptation and resilience topic we consulted organisations including LSE, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Netherlands Scientific Climate Council and Adaptation Fund. This gives us confidence that our topics are grounded in real-world use cases and will be relevant for a broad range of users.

Thank you Arminel!

*About Arminel

Prior to Climate Policy Radar, Arminel was Senior Technical Manager at CDP where she led the content development of CDP’s cities, states and regions environmental questionnaires and science-based climate targets for cities programme. She also holds a PhD in climate science, investigating the response of Himalayan glaciers to climate change, from Newcastle University.