In its Simplest Form, Metaverse is the Digital Extension of a Smart City

The city’s Metaverse is an online version of the city and works in lockstep alignment with the physical city and community, explains Benson Chan, Chief Operating Officer, Strategy of Things. “In its simplest form, the Metaverse is the digital extension of the smart city.”

Strategy of Things is a Silicon Valley-based innovation firm that offers consulting and professional services that help governments and businesses plan and incorporate next generation innovative “smart” technologies to create smarter, resilient and more responsive cities, communities, buildings and spaces. The organization is in the process of implementing a smart corridor in an underserved community in Silicon Valley. 

In this interview Chan talks about how the Metaverse can be used to build smart, resilient and inclusive cities for tomorrow.

Smart cities utilize the physical data from its many sensors, building information models, digital infrastructure and geospatial information, to replicate and create models in the Metaverse that enable it to work and behave like the physical city. 

Smart cities create policies that facilitate the deployment of digital broadband infrastructure and development of services that allow its residents and businesses to go online and build presence in the Metaverse. Smart cities build partnerships that encourage its community members to create digital services and experiences in the Metaverse for themselves and each other.

While some of the ways we interact with the Metaverse is different from how we interact with the physical community in the smart city, the city’s Metaverse creates the same outcomes that are aligned to the same needs and priorities of its residents, businesses, and visitors as the physical smart city. 

How will the Metaverse solve some of our real-world problems when integrated into something like the smart city concept?

The COVID-19 pandemic has reset smart city priorities with diversity, equity and inclusion again coming back on top of the agenda. Cities have long faced challenges with providing equity, accessibility, and quality of life for its most vulnerable residents. For example, mobility issues have limited senior citizens and physically disabled residents from fully accessing services, visiting businesses and attending events. Residents in lower socioeconomic communities do not have the same variety of stores and services that other areas have had, nor do they have the same access to quality education and health services. In person meetings and town halls have been effective means of community engagement, but restrictions on physical meetings have limited their effectiveness.

While the Metaverse cannot solve all these challenges fully, its immersive nature offers the potential to make a meaningful impact in ways not possible before. For example, homebound senior citizens and physically disabled residents with limited physical mobility, are no longer restricted in where they can go or do. In the Metaverse, they can visit and engage with friends, attend classes and events, exercise, access services, and do so in ways that are similar to in-person activities. Residents in lower socioeconomic communities use the Metaverse to attend classes and take coursework from faraway schools, and do so in an environment that is engaging, immersive and conducive to learning in ways that online learning cannot do. City leaders and managers use the Metaverse to host more effective community engagement and collaboration meetings with its residents and businesses.

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How is the Metaverse different from the past virtual worlds we have so far been talking about?

Today’s Metaverse is an evolution of the virtual universe of the past. Those virtual worlds represent alternate realities that are different from the real world that we live in. They do not look like nor behave like the world we live in. Those virtual worlds are compartmentalized from our physical world. 

In contrast, the Metaverse is an extension of our physical world, and not a separate unconnected reality. What we do in the Metaverse will have corresponding actions and implications in the physical world. Similarly, what we do in the physical world is reflected and can be acted upon in the Metaverse.

A number of things, occurring now, will serve to further differentiate the Metaverse from virtual worlds of the past. Technology advancements in processing and virtual reality will enable our immersion and interactions in the Metaverse to feel seamless and more like engagements we have in the physical world. The pandemic has accelerated and mainstreamed remote working, online conferencing and collaboration, and transacting services. 

5G, satellite broadband, and government led infrastructure investments to address the digital divide will connect more people and bring more services to the Metaverse. Our cities and urban infrastructure are beginning to incorporate sensors, Internet of Things devices, and Building Information Modeling (BIM) to facilitate operations. As they do, digital twins representing the physical infrastructure will be integrated into the Metaverse. Finally, a number of companies are building tools and platforms that will make it easy for anyone to create, monetize and launch real world services, content and experiences to the Metaverse.

Is it right to say Metaverse will be a digital twin with advanced immersive AR/VR experience?  

Although it is somewhat accurate, that interpretation is a bit simplistic of what makes a Metaverse. From a technology perspective, digital twins and VR/AR are some of the more top of mind components that enable the Metaverse, but it’s not the sole component.

It is helpful to think about the Metaverse in layers. There is the technology layer composed of some of the components like VR/AR and digital twins. There is the data layer, which feeds the digital twin and other reality models and services in the Metaverse. There is the connectivity layer, which allows residents, businesses and visitors to access the Metaverse and interact with each other. There is the content and experiences layer. These are the interactions and engagements between the community and other members that bring the Metaverse to life, grow, and sustain itself. Then finally, there is the innovation layer, which includes the tools and the means for Metaverse community members to continuously create the content, experiences and services for the Metaverse. Each layer is necessary and must be present. There is some interdependence between the layers.

How far have we travelled in terms of technology to making the Metaverse a realty? 

Despite the advancements in technology, we are still at version 0.1 of the Metaverse. What we have today is a functional Metaverse, although the experience is a long way from the vision of what the Metaverse is envisioned today.

For example, the VR goggles, while suitable for gaming, are too big, clunky and heavy for non-gaming Metaverse use. Gestures, user interfaces and user experience are designed for more advanced users, and are not intuitive for most people in the community, whose ability to use computers today vary from good to poor. Digital twins rely on real world data, but not everything in the city has been physically instrumented. AI algorithms which help predict and create the interactive environment in the Metaverse are still emerging, and the data it uses to train on, is limited. High-speed, low-latency broadband service, which connects the user to the Metaverse and facilitates a seamless experience, still eludes a majority of the people in cities and communities around the world. 

There is not an open Metaverse platform, but we have a variety of solutions providers offering their own private Metaverses that require proprietary access methods and APIs. In time, these challenges will be resolved either on their own, through the market, or by some other form of intervention through industry groups and standards bodies.

How is Strategy of Things contributing to the Metaverse? Could you briefly tell us about some of the projects you are working on and the partners you are involved with?

For the past three years, we have been hosting a smart cities summer internship for high school and university students with our partner Pilot City. This year, the focus of our internship was on the Metaverse for smart cities. Our interns explored how the Metaverse can be used to address a variety of challenges facing city residents, from using government services, facilitating quality of life, resilience, public safety, economic vitality, culture and mobility. They worked on identifying specific real world challenges and developing use cases that the Metaverse is uniquely qualified to address.

The Metaverse is still early in its evolution, with many of the use cases and applications yet to be discovered and developed. The people who will ultimately develop and use these future applications will be today’s young people. All of them are digital natives, having grown up with computers, mobile devices and the Internet. Many of them have early experiences with the Metaverse in the form of multiplayer games like Fortnite. And most of them will be living in and building tomorrow’s smart cities.

We are also in the process of implementing a smart corridor in an underserved community in Silicon Valley.