Natural disasters are life-changers for all involved, and understanding why some communities recover faster than others can be better achieved by looking at both the social and physical networks within these communities and their interplay, according to a new study.

Social networks such as Twitter may be used for monitoring, assessing and even predicting damage caused by natural disasters in just a few hours.

New York City will be awarded $176 million in federal funding to build a new flood protection system around Lower Manhattan.
 

Three years after Hurricane Sandy stranded 80,000 public housing tenants, the NYC Housing Authority is "woefully unprepared" for the next disaster.
 

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio announced $100 million in capital funding for continued storm protection in lower Manhattan to protect it from flooding.
 

At the core of risk and resilience planning is the ability to gather intelligence and create situational awareness.

A special task force created after Hurricane Sandy recommends that new construction be built to withstand the force of increasingly dangerous storms, USA Today reports. The Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Force also urged hardening of existing infrastructure to ward off power failures and fuel shortages, and to maintain cellular service during future catastrophes.

Climate change could increase the size, power and frequency of tropical storms, making a Hurricane Sandy repeat entirely possible.