ethicaLM

Applying natural language processing to the non-financial reporting of Swiss companies

In collaboration with NADEL Center for Development and Cooperation at ETH Zurich and Business Responsibility, the project explored the use of Natural Language Processing (NLP) for analyzing sustainability reports in Switzerland, which is now mandatory for companies starting in 2023. The focus is on the social dimensions of non-financial reporting, particularly human rights. Semantic search with sentence transformers was identified to have great potential. Prelemanary results show that this method has high potential to identify relevant sections in sustainability reports, but allocating the text blocks to the corresponding section of the management cycle remains a main challenge.

In this multidisciplinary collaboration, planet10 was responsible for the technical implementation of the language model. As a follow-up project, NADEL and planet10 are exploring the feasibility of creating ethicaLM, a model specifically trained to analyze language used in reporting on the social aspects of sustainability.