Addressing Climate Hazards and Resilience in the Greater Boston Inner Core: Semiautomated Content Analysis of Municipal Reports

Semiautomated web scraping and content analysis tools can be used to identify and summarize municipal climate reports, lending high-level insight into policy priorities across broad geographic and political units. A semiautomated content analysis of reports within the Greater Boston Inner Core uncovers homogeneity in climate priority and variation in community outreach efforts. Across the study area, reports highlighted floods and storms as focal hazards. Surveys and community meetings were common outreach tools, but municipalities varied in their approach. The analytic framework and tools used in this analysis may be of use to others seeking to improve existing environmental policy or coordinate policy decisions across communities.