The World Geospatial Industry Council (WGIC) announced the release of its policy report titled “Bringing Geospatial Context to the Metaverse: Considerations for the Next Steps”. This policy report brings geospatial context to the metaverse and provides specific considerations for the next steps towards expanding the value proposition of geospatial technology. The report examines the opportunities and risks for the geospatial industry in the burgeoning commercial metaverse market, presents a strategic outlook to develop a geospatial ecosystem in the metaverse, and identifies four priorities for the next steps.
Jayant Sharma, WGIC Policy Committee Chair and Senior Director, Oracle, expressed delight over the report’s release and said,
“This report presents the perspectives of the geospatial industry, innovators, and researchers on how accurate and verifiable representations of physical spaces enhance enterprise and organizational effectiveness and impact. The Policy Committee chose this topic as it builds on our previous report on spatial digital twins. We believe it, in turn, will be the basis of future reports which address topics that were out of scope and those that we hope will arise from the discussions and ideas it fosters.”
Barbara Ryan, Executive Director, acknowledged the Committee’s vision in bringing out the report and said,
“This report extends the work done by WGIC on spatial digital twins in 2022. It shows how the metaverse can be better realized by linking digital twins across different scales, geographies, and domains. While most certainly challenges remain, creating a virtual representation of our physical universe is indeed necessary for modeling, predicting, and adapting to changes in, on, and around the Earth.”