The city of Dubai has launched its Dubai metaverse plan, which aims to make the city one of the top ten metaverse economies in the world, as well as a global centre for the metaverse community.
The Dubai metaverse plan, according to an announcement published on the UAE official news agency WAM, aims to attract more than 1,000 enterprises in the sectors of blockchain and metaverse, and also promote Dubai's goals to support more than 40,000 virtual jobs by 2030.
H.H. Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of Dubai Executive Council, said that “Dubai is making great strides in enhancing its position as a global testbed for metaverse technology while investing judiciously in building capabilities and talent in creating the region’s most robust and largest ecosystem for the metaverse community.”
“Adopting new technologies will be a stepping stone in Dubai’s vision to use future technologies to create new work models in vital sectors and increase the metaverse’s impact on regional and global economies,” he added.
Commenting on the launch of the Dubai Metaverse Strategy, Omar bin Sultan Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Teleworking Applications, and Deputy Managing Director of the Dubai Future Foundation, reiterated the importance of designing the future with new digital strategies for adopting the metaverse in vital sectors. He added that the metaverse would drive the UAE’s and Dubai’s efforts to provide innovative solutions, positively impact people’s lives, and transform the city into one of the smartest hubs worldwide offering new economic opportunities.
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Al Olama said the Dubai Metaverse Strategy is in line with the objectives of the UAE AI Strategy to enhance the country’s status as one of the world’s leading countries in futuristic sectors by investing in new initiatives and empowering talent to drive digital transformation and the adoption of future technologies.
From a holistic point of view, the Dubai metaverse strategy:
- supports the development of Web3 technology and its applications to create new governmental work models and development in vital sectors, including tourism, education, retail, remote work, healthcare, and the legal sector;
- emphasises fostering talent and investing in future capabilities by providing the necessary support in metaverse education aimed at developers, content creators and users of digital platforms in the metaverse community
- aims to develop global standards in building safe and secure platforms for users and develop metaverse infrastructure and regulations to accelerate the adoption of these technologies.
- The strategy’s key pillars focus on extended reality (which blends the physical and virtual worlds), augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality, and digital twins (a virtual representation of an object or system). The strategy aims at leveraging real-time data, using machine learning and IoT, and employing AI simulation and blockchain to enhance the human thinking processes.
Data, network, cloud, and edge computing are technology pillars of the metaverse strategy that focus on real-world data that is obtained, validated, stored, processed, and managed. Other pillars include promoting the full deployment of 5G networks to enable edge computing and provide on-demand computer system resources. Edge computing allows data to be collected, stored, and processed locally via smart devices and local networks instead of the cloud.
According to the statement, VR and AR are two key enablers of the metaverse, responsible for 6,700 jobs and contributing US$500 million to the UAE’s economy, which is expected to increase significantly in the future.
The metaverse provides an array of economic opportunities. Globally, the value of venture capital and private equity financing in the metaverse reached US$13 billion in 2021, while real estate sales in the metaverse surpassed US$500 million last year.
This is the latest in the number of economies to lay out a plan for its metaverse play. Recently Chinese city Shanghai laid out its own strategy to build a metaverse economy worth 350 billion yuan (US$52 billion) by the end of 2025.
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