ABSTRACT

Disasters appear in newspaper headlines all too frequently. They are physical, political, economic, and social events to be mitigated, managed, and learned from. This chapter weaves the multi-colored threads of different community experiences into a tapestry that tells the story of how networks are utilized in pre-and post-disaster events, and which networks provide benefit at the community level. We seek to understand what utility the “networked society” concept has in the context of less developed or developing societies struggling to provide for their people’s basic needs.