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Paper short abstract

This paper explores how AI can bridge epistemic hierarchies between research stations and tropical island communities to strengthen community resilience. Drawing on fieldwork in Panama and Curaçao, it examines barriers to knowledge integration and how AI might mediate more reciprocal collaboration.

Paper long abstract

Tropical island communities face environmental crises that demand the integration of multiple knowledge systems for effective preparedness and community resilience. They actively call for technologies to address these challenges, drawing on their own ecological knowledge and lived experience of vulnerability. Yet the knowledge infrastructures through which scientific advice is produced and mobilized (e.g., international research stations) remain structured by deep epistemic hierarchies. Operated predominantly by Global North institutions, these stations deploy cutting-edge AI for ecological modeling and conservation while neighboring island communities are largely excluded from research agendas and advisory processes.

When AI tools are designed around local needs and knowledge systems, they can strengthen community resilience and open space for more participatory configurations of science advice. However, they also risk reinforcing existing power asymmetries if implemented without genuine community agency.

Drawing on fieldwork in Panama and Curaçao, I identify which barriers hinder communication and collaboration between science and local island communities. I then explore how AI applications might bridge these gaps by mediating more reciprocal forms of knowledge integration between international researchers and local communities.

This research contributes to debates on knowledge integration by reframing resilience as a collective, situated practice and asking how epistemic practices at the intersection of crisis, technology, and locality might shape more just and accountable futures.

Keywords: knowledge integration, collaboration, artificial intelligence, marine research stations, Caribbean, crisis preparedness, community resilience