Eagan, Minn. – Thomson Reuters today launched Sustainability Analytics, an online analytics resource that identifies trends, topics and more within global news coverage on climate change. Thomson Reuters is the world's leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals.

Sustainability Analytics seeks to capture and report changes in interest levels and examine the appearance and impact of major climate-related events, discussions and campaigns across global news media. It does this by identifying trends in media coverage, analyzing millions of stories from over 1,800 English language news sources. Sustainability Analytics uses advanced analytic tools to identify trending topics, people and companies in the climate change news.

The analytic resource was developed by Thomson Reuters in collaboration with Global Pulse, a special initiative of the United Nations Secretary-General on big data innovation for sustainable development and humanitarian action.

Sustainability Analytics is available for free use by the entire global community. Journalists, policy makers, researchers, government agencies, non-government organizations, as well as interested citizens and many others are expected to use Sustainability Analytics to study patterns in media coverage of climate change.  

Sustainability Analytics is being launched in time for Climate Week and the UN Climate Summit 2014.  More than 120 Heads of State and Government will be attending the Summit on Sept. 23 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Hosted by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the Summit is aimed at generating political will toward a meaningful universal climate agreement in 2015, and advancing action on the ground that will reduce emissions and build resilience to the impacts of climate change.

“A data-driven view of the changing news media coverage and focus on issues related to climate change—from renewable energy, energy efficiency, to deforestation—is a valuable resource for decision-makers seeking to make the case for climate action,” says Sara Cornish, who leads climate projects at Global Pulse.

“Applying analytical technologies to media coverage can help people around the globe better track and understand how conversations on climate change are playing out in the news,” said Khalid Al-Kofahi, vice president, research and development, Thomson Reuters. “This is a meaningful application of our mission to provide intelligent information that helps people make informed decisions and act with confidence in a complex world. Our objective is to make the global conversation on climate change more visible, helping lead to a better, more sustainable world in which we all live.”

Teams from both organizations worked together integrating Thomson Reuters analytics with Global Pulse’s pioneering work in developing open taxonomies for keywords tied to climate change (http://unglobalpulse.net/climate/).  Thomson Reuters research & development performs computer science research to help improve how professionals find, consume and act upon information.  For more information, visit: http://labs.thomsonreuters.com.  

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