New ideation competition on metaverse worlds

ITU News

Are you a student with innovative ideas on how the metaverse could support sustainable development?

A new global competition welcomes your participation to show how virtual simulations could benefit smart cities and communities.

The Metaverse Think-a-Thon will culminate at the first United Nations Virtual Worlds Day on 14 June.

Registration for the competition is open until 29 March.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and its metaverse focus group are organizing the competition in partnership with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the UN International Computing Centre (UNICC).  

Potential directions

Students may take inspiration from three promising areas of metaverse innovation:

• Virtual education platforms offering immersive environments for lifelong learning, especially for communities underserved by formal education systems.
• Disaster preparedness and response with virtual simulations and training environments to better understand and mitigate disaster risks.
• Urban conflict-resolution simulations to build common understandings among city stakeholders including city leaders, urban planners, and the communities they serve.

Competition format

The competition welcomes enrolled or recently graduated students to compete as individuals or teams of 3-5 people.

The creators of the winning proposal will receive 10,000 Swiss francs (CHF), with prizes of CHF 5,000 and CHF 3,000 for second and third place.

Entries can take a variety of forms:

• Research papers or reports
• Project proposals
• Policy recommendations
• Educational materials
• Community-engagement initiatives

Entries will be evaluated on their degree of innovation, relevance to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, scalability and sustainability, potential impact, and feasibility.

Gain global recognition

The creators of outstanding solutions will showcase their ideas at the first UN Virtual Worlds Day.

Featuring expert talks and demos of advances in virtual reality, the day will showcase the fast-growing potential of the metaverse and spatial computing to support sustainable development.

UN Virtual Worlds Day is presented by ITU, the World Bank, the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), the International Training Centre of the International Labour Organization (ITCILO), the UN Futures Lab Network, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the UN International Computing Centre (UNICC), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN University (UNU), the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (UNDPPA), the UN Innovation Network (UNIN), the UN in Guatemala, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UNESCWA), and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFFC) and its interagency initiative Resilience Frontiers.

Header image credit: Adobe Stock