Power, Communications, Trade, and Travel networks:
Locations of resources encourage development and nearby settlement.
Trade between settlements creates the need for a road, river, or rail network.
When creating a trade network map, consider the locations of agricultural areas, resource such a mine-able minerals, and the large settlements with industrial specialists who can shape those resources into useful products.
Farmers bring grain to millers whose flour enables bakers to craft foodstuffs.
A road and trade network connectss the farms to the mills to the settlements where specialists like the baker ply their trades.
As technology expands the networks increase in density and capacity as well but the basic principals apply.
Trade networks, whether via land, river, sea, air, or across space connect the outposts and settlements which harvest resource to the markets which need them.
Creating these trade network requires identifying the resource rich areas and the areas to trade them with.
Trade and travel networks naturally gave rise to communication networks as well: Pony Express, telegraphs following rail lines, and ocean-borne packets carried by trade ships.
After the creation and improvement of electronics, physical communication networks expanded over the airwaves with radio and microwave links.
During the Space Age, satellites linked continents and gave rise to earmly warning weather networks.
Monitoring for events and communicating about them went hand in hand.
Creating communications networks includes civilian, military, and clandestine.
Civilian communication and monitoring networks include weather monitoring satellites and communications relays.
Military communication and monitoring networks include strategic and tactical intelligence gathering and secure communication relays.
Clandestine communication and monitoring networks provide coordination for specific groups for nefarious or illegal purposes.
Communication networks may be point-to-point realtime connections or implement store-and-forward relays.
Power network infrastructure links power collection or generation stations with the consumers of that power.