Emergent disaster response often depends on improvised transport and evacuation networks. Boats, private vehicles, volunteer drivers, dispatch lines, and ad hoc routing systems move people, meals, and supplies when formal transport infrastructures are impaired or too slow [@kendrawachtendorf2006sensemaking; @watters2014].
Improvised evacuation
Kendra and Wachtendorf’s account of the waterborne evacuation of Lower Manhattan shows how an improvised fleet can become a practical collective solution in the absence of prior planning [@kendrawachtendorf2006sensemaking]. The significance of the case is not only that boats moved people. It is that movement was coordinated through distributed judgment and rapidly evolving norms rather than a single command hierarchy.
Volunteer drivers and dispatch
The Occupy Sandy field orientation shows transport as a simple but essential method. Volunteers were grouped into cars, matched with point people, and tied back to hub communications and dispatch hotlines [@occupysandyorientation2012]. This demonstrates how even basic vehicle capacity becomes infrastructure when it is organized relationally.
Routing supplies and meals
Watters’ account of Occupy Sandy shows transport networks linking hubs, kitchens, warehouses, and neighborhoods [@watters2014]. The work included moving supplies into central sites, taking hot meals back out, and connecting assessments of local need to actual delivery routes. Ambinder and coauthors similarly show how Occupy Sandy used live information flows to route people and resources under changing conditions [@ambinder2013].
Significance
Transport and evacuation networks matter because decentralized response must still move through space. Emergent response succeeds not by eliminating logistics but by socializing them: turning drivers, boats, phones, and local route knowledge into shared infrastructure.