ORIGINAL PAPER Examining collaborative disaster response in China: network perspectives Xuesong Guo 1 • Naim Kapucu 2 Received: 28 May 2015 / Accepted: 3 August 2015 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015 Abstract Effective disaster response requires well-coordinated efforts among individuals and agencies. Although collaborative disaster response increases in popularity, little has been accomplished within the hierarchical, centralized command and control context of China. This study examined collaborative disaster response in China based on the case of extraordinary serious cryogenic freezing rain and snow disaster. In addition, public man- agers were surveyed to investigate network establishment, with preliminary analysis on whole network using centrality measures. Subsequently, the blockmodel was employed to discuss the whole network structure followed by analysis on structural holes and inter- mediaries. Lastly, issues such as obstacles to effective collaboration and propositions proposed for further research were discussed. Keywords Collaborative disaster response Á Interorganizational networks Á Network analysis Á Disasters Á China 1 Introduction Recently, China received attention from scholars and practitioners of emergency man- agement worldwide because of the impact from the following disasters: 1998 Yangtze River Floods, SARS, Sichuan Earthquake, and 2008 Chinese winter storms (Bai 2008). Following a top-down model, with the aim to form a comprehensive disaster response & Naim Kapucu kapucu@ucf.edu Xuesong Guo guoxues1@163.com 1 School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, People’s Republic of China 2 School of Public Administration, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA 123 Nat Hazards DOI 10.1007/s11069-015-1925-1