The term “Social Network” has been used for over a century to connote complex sets of common-interests-based relationships between members of social systems at all levels, from interpersonal to international. The concept was further developed by J.A. Barnes in 1954 to systematically denote patterns of ties that cut across the traditional concepts used by the public and social scientists. As the science developing and more networks created for combined social and professional purposes, how to efficiently and systematically organize the network and utilize the information and resources reside in the network for problem-solving at different scales have become a challenge to individual networks and their organizers. This is mainly because most of the networks have very diversified membership bases and loose management systems if there is any. Environmental issues, which are becoming worldwide focus, have a nature of giving direct and broad impacts on people and societies. Resolving those issues inevitably needs mechanisms for extensive collaborations, both locally and internationally. Thus how a network can be used to gather resources for working relationship development and synergistic problem-solving becomes an important question. By using the development of a bilateral environmental network as a model, we present a successful example on how an environmental network can be developed and how the internal resources of the network can be efficiently mobilized for connecting people remotely, problem-solving and project-designing.

Results/Conclusions

Within three years, the network has been created and developed from a network of individuals into a network of networks, which provides a platform for connecting academic, business, government and social entities in both China and the U.S. to efficiently set up working relationships, provide systematic solutions and help the implementation of the proposed solutions. The issues raised by unprofessional people who encountered environmental problems were distributed through the network, resources from different entities were identified, and integrated solutions were generated through collaborative efforts.