Project Summary
This interdisciplinary project develops participatory AI tools that integrate government, private sector, and community-generated data to support climate resilience. Focusing on marginalized communities in Southeast Asia, the research preserves local environmental knowledge within AI systems and tests participatory approaches across three governance contexts. The project advances environmental justice theory and provides replicable frameworks for democratizing AI in climate adaptation.
The study will take place in Semarang, Indonesia and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. In Semarang, we focus on fishing communities in Central Java’s port capital that face acute climate impacts from sea-level rise and intensifying floods that threaten both livelihoods and residential areas. This study levarages technical pilots conducted in Seoul using YOLO Computer Vision and LLM algorithms.
Objectives & Research Questions
How do different governance models in East and Southeast Asia shape environmental knowledge inclusion and exclusion?
How can AI integrate multiple data sources while preserving indigenous knowledge complexity?
How can AI development be democratized to center community control?
How do participatory AI approaches adapt across different institutional contexts?
Keywords: Artificial intelligence; large language models; civic technology; democracy; participatory planning
Collaborators: Dr. Chaewon Ahn, Dr. Catharina Dwi Astuti Depari (Universitas Atma Jaya Yogyakarta), Dr. Lulut Indrianingrum (Universitas Negeri Semarang)
Status: Approved