Quick take:
- Dubai Municipality has announced plans to create a futuristic version of Dubai City in the metaverse.
- The team behind the project is seeking partnerships with the private sector and investors to create an immersive 3D world called “One Human Reality”.
- The Director-general of Dubai Municipality envisioned a virtual world where people could time-travel to historic moments.
Dubai is planning to create a metaverse version of itself that will allow users to time-travel to historical moments, the Dubai Municipality has announced. According to the director-general of the middle-eastern city, Dubai is looking to collaborate with the private sector and investors to come up with the perfect futuristic representation of itself.
Speaking at a plenary session called ‘Operating Cities of Tomorrow’ at the World Government Summit 2022 (WGS2022) in Expo 2020 Dubai, Dawood Abdul Rahman Al Hajri, director-general of the municipality said the city is looking to pounce on the opportunities created by the metaverse.
Dubai’s metaverse version will be called “One Human Reality”, which Al Hajri described as “the meeting point or the integration of two worlds: the metaverse and the world we are currently living in together.”
The metaverse has been broadly described as a virtual space of immersive 3D worlds made possible by utilising the latest technologies in 3D imagery, augmented and virtual reality technologies, as well as, artificial intelligence and blockchain gaming, among others.
In a recent report, Bloomberg estimated that the metaverse could generate $800 billion in revenue by 2024, while Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs analysts think it could be an $8 trillion opportunity in the long term.
Al Hajri thinks a metaverse version of Dubai could offer residents experiences such as immersive tours of landmark destinations in the metaverse or taking a virtual walk through the park in the city in their 3D avatars.
He emphasised the importance of building the required infrastructure to facilitate the construction of the metaverse version of the city saying “futuristic use cases would require portals in public spaces and city centres.”
The Dubai Municipality has also launched a program called “One Human Reality Talks” aimed to bring companies and investors to one forum where they can develop and share the new initiative.
Al Hajri also stressed the importance of maintaining certain principles to make the “One Human Reality” as secure as possible. He highlighted four key pillars, namely: “human expectations for their environment, human needs with laws to guarantee privacy, security and ownership rights, and technology functions.”
He also believes that big data will play a crucial part to make the “One Human Reality” work. “With the help of the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence, city leaders will be able to build a digital infrastructure enabling us to access this world in a new way,” he said.
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