Using Hypermedia to Improve Safety in Underground Metropolitan Transportation

One of the main concerns in the organization and management of public transportation is passenger safety before an emergency. This is even more critical in the case of subway transportation, where risks are higher in the case of fire. Handling a critical emergency is a stressing task, in which large amounts of information must be used in order to make the right decision in a very short time.In this paper, we describe a pioneering application of hypermedia technology consisting of the integration of all the information needed to handle emergencies in a large hypermedia document. It reduces the response time remarkably by integrating text, graphics, sound, video and 3D models in a user-friendly interface. The authors and the Safety Office of Metro Valencia, the public transportation company of Valencia, developed it jointly between 1998 and 2000. We outline some of the technical decisions made during the project, as well as some of the lessons learned concerning the development of large hypermedia projects.