We introduce this book and the field of disaster networks briefly in this chapter. We indicate what we mean by networks, and we advocate reading the rest of the book keeping the following things in mind since they're not always present or explicit in research in this field: the ways types of roles and types of relationships in disaster settings produce fundamentally different kinds of network dynamics; levels of analysis; interdisciplinarity; potential versus realized ties; ethics; and applications or translation. The book's chapters cover hazards originating from human carelessness and those originating in the earth's biophysical environment, and generally focus topically either on social support or coordination of emergency management, and some chapters methodologically cover network structures or longitudinal network dynamics.