As witnessed in the recent major earthquakes and other disasters around the globe, people need a rapid way to communicate to obtain emergency assistance and to locate their family members, water, food, and shelter. The current primary infrastructures (cellular networks, Internet) do not satisfy these needs well during disasters. Intel Labs Berkeley researchers are working on a project that would enable citizens to continue using familiar Internet applications on their personal devices (e.g., smart phones, laptops) even when network infrastructure is degraded or barely functioning. They have designed a new protocol with the ability to automatically discover neighbors as well as architecture to support media-rich situation awareness applications. See video and read more on this project and other Intel Labs Berkeley Research projects.