Bayesian Inverse Reinforcement Learning for Smallholder Climate Adaptation — 6 Sub-Saharan African Countries
## Acknowledgments
Cloud computing resources were provided by the Google Cloud TPU Research Cloud (TRC) program. Geospatial data extraction was supported by the Google Earth Engine (GEE) academic research quota.
# BIRL Formal Analysis Pipeline
Bayesian Inverse Reinforcement Learning for Smallholder Agricultural Decision-Making.
6 Sub-Saharan African countries (Ethiopia, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda), 2008–2023.
## Directory Structure
```
Formal Analysis/
├── README.md
│
├── data/ ← Shared data
│ ├── all_countries_panel_birl.parquet ← Full panel (514K × 211)
│ └── birl_sample.parquet ← Analysis sample (222K × 244)
│
├── 01_Data_Screening/ ← Sample selection & cleaning
├── 02_Action_Space/ ← 27 actions (9 crops × 3 intensity)
├── 03_FDH/ ← Order-m FDH frontier estimation
├── 04_Env_Model/ ← LightGBM environment model (Colab)
├── 05_BIRL_SVI/ ← Variational Inference prototype (Colab)
├── 06_BIRL_MCMC/ ← MCMC posterior inference (GCP)
├── 07_2050_Counter_Fact/ ← 2050 climate counterfactual & policy welfare
│
└── docs/ ← Build guides, reports, and analysis notes
```
## Pipeline Overview
```
all_countries_panel_birl.parquet (514K × 211)
│
▼ Steps 01-03 (local, ~30s)
birl_sample.parquet (222K × 244, with actions + FDH efficiency)
│
▼ Step 04 (Colab, ~2.5h)
env_model_output.npz + model_mu.txt + model_sigma.txt
│
▼ Step 05→06 (Colab/GCP, hours, Complete analysis requires 8Chips TPU V4)
posterior.pkl (MCMC: ρ_c, γ_c per country, 12K samples)
│
▼ Step 07 (local, ~30min)
CE tables, climate loss, policy value, synergy
```
## Pipeline Steps
| Step | Directory | Runner | Environment | Time |
|------|-----------|--------|-------------|-----:|
| 01 | `01_Data_Screening/` | `screen_and_clean.py` | Local | ~6s |
| 02 | `02_Action_Space/` | `build_ …