SAPIENT: Sustainability mApper for Planning and InvestmENT

The tool is designed to cater to a diverse audience, including investors, researchers, policymakers, and, in general, actors from both private and public institutions at all levels. Its primary goal is to empower policymakers, government bodies, international and non-governmental organizations, and the private sector by providing them with the tools to make well-informed decisions while assessing and reporting their contributions to the SDGs. SAPIENT holds significant potential to yield tangible and positive impacts across various sectors, such as agriculture, development planning, rural and urban development, and energy.

This innovative tool opens the opportunity to integrate its outcomes with the SDG Synergies Tool, enabling a more in-depth analysis of the interactions between SDGs. This integration further facilitates the contextualization of these interactions at different decision-making scales, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of the implications and opportunities for sustainable development.

In 2023, the unveiling of SEI’s groundbreaking SAPIENT tool marked a pivotal moment, stemming from a collaboration initiated back in 2019 when the World Bank sought SEI’s expertise to tackle a critical challenge – identifying the alignment of their investments to the SDGs. Enter SAPIENT: a cutting-edge machine learning marvel designed to assess the alignment of investment projects with the ambitious targets of Agenda 2030, all through the power of automated document analysis.

SAPIENT has already delved into over 2000 project documents and sifted through national, regional, and local policy papers, spanning domains like climate change, deforestation, water management, and agriculture. But its journey is far from over.

By the end of 2024, SAPIENT will be even more accessible, with both desktop and online versions poised to democratize its capabilities for users worldwide, now including support for the analysis of documents in Spanish. This new update to SAPIENT will also shift from a Command Line Interface to a Graphical User Interface, which will allow users to interact with the Tool clicking buttons rather than typing commands.

Diving into SAPIENT’s capabilities

SAPIENT utilizes a Random Forest Machine Learning algorithm to efficiently classify and visualize complex data, providing clarity and actionable insights. This algorithm is based on feeding the tool a set of already classified texts for its training. Using that training data, the Random Forest algorithm identifies patterns in data to develop a set of decision trees – hence, the “Forest” part of its name. Combining the classification of documents with network analysis, SAPIENT produces tabular and graphical outputs to users, such as column charts and network graphs that synthesize the matches of each document but also how the mapped SDGs or Objectives coexist across the set of documents.

SAPIENT’s strengths lie in:

• Mastery of text mining: effortlessly extracting key information from text documents, aligning actions, objectives, and policies with SDGs.
• Precision Prediction: achieving an impressive 80% precision rate, ensuring accurate alignment of documents with the SDGs.
• Mapping to the objectives of the European Taxonomy for Sustainable Activities: aligning policies, actions, initiatives, and projects with the six established environmental objectives for the European Taxonomy (Climate Change Mitigation, Climate Change Adaptation, Transition to a Circular Economy, Pollution Prevention and Control, Sustainable Use and Protection of Water, and Protection and Restoration of Biodiversity and Ecosystems).

Explore SAPIENT’s data insights:

• Match Results: Gauge impact with total matches to SDG Goals per document analyzed.
• Relative Results: Unveil the proportional contribution of each SDG within a project through percentages.
• Absolute Results: Gain a holistic view with total mappings of each SDG across all projects.
• Network Visualizations: Visualize interconnections and relationships within the data using network graphs, alongside dynamic visualizations like bar plots and histograms.

How to be cited:

Cárdenas Vélez, M.*; & Betancur Jaramillo, J.C*; Lobos Alva, I.; Hernández Orozco, E.; Maestre Másmela, D. (2022). SAPIENT – Sustainability mApper for Planning and InvestmENT (Version 2.0) [Computer software]. The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI). SAPIENT (shinyapps.io).

* The order of authorship does not denote a difference in their contribution to this work.

Author contributions: MC-V contributed in conceptualization, methodology, and formal analysis, software, validation, investigation, data curation, writing, supervision, project administration, and budget acquisition; JB-J contributed conceptualization, methodology, and formal analysis, software, validation, investigation, data curation, writing, visualization, and budget acquisition; EH-O, and IL-A were involved in writing, conceptualization, validation, and data curation; IL-A contributed to funding acquisition, supervision, and project administration; DM-M contributed to validation and data curation.

This project is ongoing, supported with funding from the SEI Tools and Methods Fund.

Currently, SAPIENT can analyze text in English. However, ongoing development efforts are expanding its capabilities. By the end of 2024, users will have the ability to use SAPIENT for analyzing information in Spanish. Moreover, an integration pathway is being established between SAPIENT and the SDG Synergies Tool, facilitating the examination of positive and negative interactions between policies and their corresponding SDGs.

Another major update for SAPIENT will be its transition from a command-line interface (CLI) into a graphical user interface (GUI). This GUI will provide users with an intuitive platform, easing their interaction with the platform and maximizing the potential reached users. Key milestones in the ongoing development include:

1. Launching both the web and offline (desktop) versions of the tool to ensure accessibility in areas with limited connectivity.
2. Implementation of a user registration system to monitor tool usage. This system will also gather valuable data on user experience and impact.

These developments signify a commitment to enhancing the usability, accessibility, and functionality of SAPIENT, positioning it as a powerful and user-friendly tool for diverse linguistic and geographical contexts.