On 25-26 January 2003, a simulated mass-casualty exercise called ShawdowBowl was conducted to establish medical reachback where local physicians could work with medical specialists all over the country to help triage the situation and monitor for environmental impact. The Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) at the University of South Florida predeployed a robot and operator team to San Diego and tested reachback communications capabilities to a command center in Tampa, Florida. Analysis of the data revealed that the technology that worked best was the oldest. In particular, telephones were relied on extensively as networks suffered a number of outages. One surprising result was that it was more difficult than expected to interface systems into the existing structure of another group.
