We are building on a Caribbean island. Although we learned a great deal on our previous island building in British Columbia, we did not feel it prepared us completely for building on an island in the tropics.
Research is essential.
There aren't many current construction or architecture books about the tropics, but here are the ones we found. I've rated them according to how useful I found them to my project on Anguilla, zero to 5 stars. They were all good books. Tradition-based building design in southeast asia. Architectural Design for Tropical Regions by Cleveland Salmon.