The ability of metaverse technologies to bring information and data to life makes it an incredibly powerful tool to educate and inform both businesses and the public.
Setting the scene
The last few years have seen stratospheric growth in metaverse technologies - a 2022 PwC report found that over 70% of organisations surveyed expect the metaverse to be business as usual within two-three years. It’s changing how we operate, and will affect how we sell and purchase goods, sign and enforce contracts, recruit and train talent, and interact with customers and communities.
For the last six years, our teams have been researching, experimenting and advising organisations on such emerging technologies and, on April 22nd 2023 (World Earth Day), we launched our first public metaverse world on Decentraland, one of the most established platforms for the technology.
How we helped
Our groundbreaking interactive and immersive experience on Decentraland includes a role-playing game that helps users understand the urgent actions needed to tackle climate change, a communal area to watch live panel events and films, and a competition which tests participants' knowledge on how smarter investments can add up to Net Zero.
We are also converging the metaverse with technologies such as cloud. Our UK Metaverse Technologies, Cloud Centre of Excellence and AWS alliance teams developed a new way to visualise geospatial data generated via our AWS data platform. This meant we could create a digital twin projection of key data and overlay it onto a 3D model of London. Using cloud-based information sources, including public census and anonymised consumer traction data, it allows participants to visualise the city and its inhabitants, where they live, where they work, as well as their shopping and transport habits.
The ambition of this proposition is to enhance the way we tell data stories which can increase efficiency for decision making. An example is a food vendor who wants to open a location in an area with high footfall that is currently underserved by existing venues, targeting the lunchtime crowd. Or, a tourist who wants to find a good place for a drink, somewhere close to an Italian restaurant, where he can meet like-minded people.
“Many think of the metaverse as a distant concept but what we’re seeing is our clients and our people want more immersive, interactive and genuinely innovative experiences now. These projects are the perfect example of that and really support our mission of being a human led, tech-powered firm.”
Alex Ruhl
Head of Metaverse Technologies, PwC UK
Making a difference
Our demo at the AWS summit, as well as our presence in Decentraland, confirmed the enormous appetite of businesses, customers, and employees for these experiences. Our investments in metaverse technologies, alongside our ability to deliver cloud native applications, modern data platforms and be truly innovative in our approach to visualising and monetising data, put us at the forefront of meeting these needs.
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