European Business and Technology Centre, a project advisory and facilitation organisation, recently organised an invite-only talk about the emerging technologies in the Europe-India Business Corridor. Led by Dinis Guarda, author, influencer, thought leader, a serial entrepreneur in emerging technologies, and Founder and CEO of ztudium, thought leaders from the corridor discussed the possibilities, key trends, potentials, applications and policy action that would boost these technologies in the corridor.

The event was an invite-only talk organised to harness the potentials that lie within emerging areas such as the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Fintech, digital transformation, and blockchain.

As Web 3.0 and Metaverse make swift ingression in the global industrial scenario, the event ensures its efficient catalysis by raising awareness amongst all the stakeholders. Amongst many challenges and issues discussed, personal data protection was the key highlight.

European Business and Technology Centre: Building a robust and sustainable business relationship

EBTC facilitates smart collaborations that are focused on sustainable solutions, based on the expertise and strong network of the two regions. Harnessing the academic strength and capital in Europe and the entrepreneurial spirit and large market in India, the corridor creates a strong bond of trust between the complementary partners.

“EBTC assesses the local demands, ground zero work in action, and curates projects and clusters for private and public sectors. Within this ecosystem that is made by our partners and stakeholders, we play a complementary role of bridging the ends together with our solutions. This dialogue is our way to bring technology and policy experts together and create a knowledge pool from where new dimensions off-shoot into the mainstream.”, said Mr. Poul V. Jenson, Managing Director of EBTC.

By organising programmes, projects, and clusters, EBTC builds actionable intelligence to provide innovative solutions that promise a greener and carbon-neutral future for the corridor.

Society 5.0, Metaverse, 4IR tech

Our new technologically enabled society will be called Society 5.0. It represents a significant shift to a just and sustainable society, achieved by a high degree of convergence between cyberspace and physical space. And the Metaverse is the perfect place to make it happen.

Immersion in the Metaverse will significantly extend the span of our conscious existence, limited only by our imagination.  Our real-world presence can be enhanced, enriched, facilitated and augmented with a virtual overlay that allows us to explore beyond our physical and social boundaries.

Digital twinning and mapping of real and virtual objects, entities, and people will enable us to do so. Soon, our avatars will be able to move through and interact with the physical and virtual worlds concurrently interchangeably in real time.  We can, for example, travel and visit present and remote physical and virtual buildings, homes, workspaces, places of worship and cultural centres.

The fundamental differences between the virtual and the physical worlds present plenty of opportunities for contrasting and complementary forms of engagement.  The Metaverse might foster large numbers of direct participation and interaction with peer-to-peer experiences that offer jobs, volunteering opportunities, financial empowerment, lending, and trading with time.

Case study: ztudium, the maker of industry 4IR tech to ensure smart cities

ztudium is a global leading maker of industry Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies and research. Their digital transformation DNA is leveraged by emergent technologies like blockchain, AI, Machine Learning, and AR, and VR to provide unique solutions for businesses, enterprises, governments, public institutions, and individuals. The global ecosystem reaches more than 1 million people a month, focussing on empowering the economies and societies that are still not digitally transformed.

Appreciating the initiative, Dinis Guarda, Founder and CEO of Ztudium said,

“With individuals at the core, we envision creating smart cities across the globe that are sustainable in their true essence. Emerging technologies, like AI, and blockchain are giving new horizons to the creators and innovators in our society. The immersion and interactions that the metaverse promises will enhance our cultural and societal experiences. The world needs to be ready for this revolution. We need more corridors like this that create the global channels of information and research while tackling the challenges that arise with time.”

Another frontier of 4IR: Personal Data Protection Framework, ensuring inclusion and sustainability

The Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill of 2019 was recently rolled back in India. The new framework is still awaited and is still in discussion. As an expert himself and the leader at the event, Dinis Guarda shared his insights on the policy framework that is needed to create a robust PDP in India.

According to him, the key to achieving this is to create awareness among the people. Discussion groups from universities and academic societies and also the industry world from across the country can participate to present fresh ideas and challenges in framing the policy.

“It should be done in a way that empowers the people on one hand and creates simple solutions that can be implemented easily by the organisations that deal with data”, he said. Sharing his recommendations for the regulators, he added, “Be smart in how you take it forward, and how you implement it in public.”

To find out more about EBTC’s Knowledge Hub and Initiatives, visit European Business and Technology Centre (EBTC).

The post Personal Data Protection With A Robust Policy Framework: European Business And Technology Centre appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

This article defines what a digital twin is, and suggests where technology is headed in our increasingly interconnected world.

What is a digital twin?

Digital twins are virtual replicas of a physical product, process, or system that bridge the physical and digital worlds. Interestingly, the concept of digital twin technology has been around for longer than you may think. When the Apollo mission was developed, scientists at NASA created a digital twin to conduct experiments on the clone before the mission started.

Today’s digital twins use sensors to collect real-time data about a physical item, which is used to create a virtual duplicate of the item. The digital duplicate can be optimised, manipulated and analysed to test different scenarios in a risk-free environment. Digital twins also integrate artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to bring together data, algorithms, and context. This enables organisations to:

• Get new answers to new questions

• Test new ideas

•  Uncover problems before they happen

•  Monitor items remotely

The advantages of digital twins include:

• Virtual representation of a virtual ecosystem map of assets across operations and business processes using accessible, real-time data flowing across connected systems helps automate workflows, mitigate risks, and drive greater sustainability.

• Data intelligence allows for constant monitoring of any entity, system, or device, shared to interactive dashboards in real-time. This thread of corresponding data allows organisations to overcome data and organisational silos to truly understand how well their operations are performing.

Secure components of digital twins can be shared with various stakeholders in the ecosystem, enabling better collaboration and communication, regardless of location.

How are digital twins being used today?

In the past, digital twins were used to improving the performance of single assets, such as wind turbines or jet engines. These days, they connect not just one asset, but systems of assets and devices or even entire organisations. As they combine more and more assets with information about processes and people, their ability to help solve complex problems is also increasing.

Digital twin energy management

Energy management platforms such as Smarter Technologies’ SmarterView essentially create a digital twin of the energy profile of a smart building. Before making changes to the physical environment, energy managers can manipulate energy consumption in the digital realm to assess its impact and make decisions accordingly. For example, one could test the effect of replacing an old appliance or piece of equipment with a new model that’s more energy-efficient and see how long it would take for the upgraded model to pay itself off.

Product development

Using digital twin technology, organisations can predict future performance and analyse potential process failures of a product, even before the final design is approved. This scenario-based testing allows engineers to predict the failures and risks and apply mitigation in simulation labs.

Asset management

The digital thread produced by digital twins enables data flows. It provides an integrated view of asset data, helping to optimise product life cycles by identifying gaps in operational efficiencies and producing a wealth of process improvement opportunities.

Healthcare

By creating a digital twin of a hospital, doctors, hospital administrators, and nurses can get powerful, real-time insights into patient health and operational workflows. For example, by using sensors to monitor patients and coordinate equipment and staff, hospital staff can offer a better way to analyse processes and alert the right people when immediate action is needed. This results in reduced emergency room wait times and improved patient flow, which decreases costs and improves patient outcomes.

By the end of this decade, scientists may even come up with a fully functional digital twin of a human being that can help make massive strides with medical research, drug testing and proactive injury prevention.

Commercial real estate and building management

Digital twins allow building operators to bring together previously unconnected systems to gain new insights, optimise workflows, and monitor processes remotely. The technology can also give occupants more control over their personal workspaces and environmental conditions, thereby enhancing their experience. By optimising building systems using digital twins, operators can reduce costs, avoid future costs, increase occupancy rates, and improve the overall asset value of the building.

Supply chain optimisation

Supply chains have undergone massive disruption and instability in the last few years in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war on Ukraine, with shortages of raw materials, and finished products impacting daily life. Supply chain visibility has become more important than ever before. Deploying digital twin technology enables companies to digitise their end-to-end supply chains, using intelligence to automate and optimise operations, reduce risk, and increase on-time delivery.

What is the future of the digital twin?

For companies and organisations already using smart technology, digital twins are the next step in the digital journey. Today’s digital twin technology can be used in new and mature ways, integrating smart sensors, AI, and ML to solve the most prominent organisational challenges, while improving efficiencies, optimising processes, detecting problems before they occur, and innovating for the future. It’s important to note, however, that maximising the usefulness of digital twins requires high-performing databases that can pull together and process various data sets in real-time. If your organisation is interested in producing not only better business outcomes, better environmental outcomes, and better social outcomes, digital twins are undoubtedly worth exploring.

About the author: Matthew Margetts is the Director of Sales and Marketing at Smarter Technologies. His background includes working for blue-chip companies such as AppNexus, AOL/ Verizon, and Microsoft in the UK, Far East and Australia.

The post How Businesses Can Make Use of ‘Digital Twins’ Technology appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

First steps in the Metaverse

The Metaverse is estimated to reach over $1.53 trillion by 2030 (source: Cointelegraph, PwC) and will grow to include communication and trust from one blockchain to another, expanding over multiple cross-chain-related technologies and virtual world platforms. These will multiply the experiences available to us in our daily lives, which have only ever existed so far in sci-fi movies like Blade Runner, Star Wars, or Star Trek.

What experiences, specifically? These can range from meeting a friend in the Metaverse who lives across the world; to increasingly interactive virtual work calls that transport you into the office without you having to leave the house; taking up a sport from the comfort of your own home and without having to pay a gym membership, or even visiting a new country through immersive online travel. The Metaverse will make all these possible.

This is especially important for the creator community. As Mark van Rijmenam, Metaverse speaker and Tech expert mentioned in a recent interview with Dinis Guarda, it is time that we move to a system of value creation where if someone is putting an effort to create something, they should be rewarded for that content.

“That’s where NFTs are so important. Because they allow us to have a different perspective and monetize whatever we create in ways that we want. It’s a lot of hard work in an open metaverse to create a fan following, build a community, and market yourself to create a brand. But at least in the open metaverse, those efforts are fully rewarded, instead of handing over 50-70% of the money that you make”, he added.

The goal: embodied the Internet?

In a more futuristic vision of a global, “real” Metaverse, this could be called an “embodied Internet” where we would experience a continuous sense of presence within the digital realm. We would be able to hop seamlessly from one activity to another, and from online environments to offline ones. We could embody a whole new persona online, and demonstrate our creativity and originality through our avatar. Furthermore, we would be able to interact with other people, play music, chat, and buy virtual goods, while inside the virtual space. Additionally, we will be able to interact with other avatars or colleagues as if we are in the same room, and seamlessly shift back to the physical world.

Despite reservations from sceptics, it is not far-fetched to prefigure the Metaverse as an embodied internet. Indeed, the Metaverse will just be a part of our physical world, as real as anything else. We will soon be living, working, laughing, exercising, building relationships, and playing games in this simulated reality.

Digital twins in the embodied Internet of the future

One company, DXC Technology is at the forefront of this movement.  They recently hosted their annual sales conference – with 1000 staff, together with customers and motivational speakers – in DXC Virtual World, one of the most advanced business Metaverse environments. DXCVirtualWorld is one of the most advanced business Metaverse environments. The campus is set on an island and has exposition halls, auditoriums, classrooms, meeting spaces and even a soccer field, theatre, music venue and beach. Participants moved around, visited project stalls, seminars, and keynote speeches, and interacted socially, much as they would in real life, all without leaving home.  This area of the Metaverse will only grow as it progresses.

The dangers

Rijmenam also warned about the dangers that come with the Metaverse still being in its infancy. We have the responsibility to develop it in an accessible, responsible, open way.

“With the Metaverse, we sort of have this unique opportunity, this one shot, to create an Internet which is there for us, for you, for you and me, for us as humans, and not there for the Big Tech controlling us.

So my book is really meant as a blueprint on how to create this Open Metaverse. What do we need to do to achieve that? And we have to be really careful when we build the Metaverse because don’t forget, when the Internet first arrived, it was very much an Open Internet. When we talk about Web1, the early, early days of the Internet.”

Further, Dinis Guarda has echoed the sentiment that the new Metaverse really needs to work for all.

“An Open Metaverse is where your identity is protected so it can’t be deleted, it’s private it’s about you, it’s specific and persistent, community-driven, it’s portable, you can take it from one platform to another, and has a self-sovereign identity. I think those are the crucial elements of how you can create an open metaverse.

With the Internet and other technologies still inaccessible to quite a large proportion of global populations. This is the challenge: how are we going to achieve this? We need to make that next shift, the next iteration to make it accessible for everyone.”

Conclusion

We have become the subjects in the great ongoing experiment of virtual society.  Across Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, to more niche platforms like Fortnite, Second Life, Decentraland and countless others, we are readily communicating and stimulating each other remotely, through interactions that are, for the most part, emotionally indistinguishable from experiences in the ‘real’ physical world. What we need to do next, is to make sure this new Metaverse works for us, as humans. Not for the Big Tech companies.

The post The New Metaverse Should Work For All, And Businesses Should Lead The Change appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

Our cities, now more digital than ever before

While there is undoubtedly a lot of hype and speculation about what the Metaverse is and is not and what it might become, there are some very studied interpretations of what it might mean. One such is Society 5.0, proposed as a future society that Japan should aspire to:
“A human-centred society that balances economic advancement with the resolution of social problems by a system that highly integrates cyberspace and physical space.”

And now, the leadership of various cities is becoming interested in how to utilise this idea for the common good. In a recent interview, Lena Geraghty, Director of Sustainability and Innovation at the National League of Cities (NLC), explained that:

“The metaverse is definitely the new buzzword in a long list of emerging technology buzzwords, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile for city leaders to get familiar and comfortable about what it could mean for their communities.”

“The metaverse has real potential to improve city services and the lives of residents if deployed well. For that to happen, city leaders need to be at the forefront of the conversation,” she noted.

Cognitively-enabled spaces

Immersion in the Metaverse will significantly extend the span of our conscious existence, limited only by our imagination.  Our real-world presence can be enhanced, enriched, facilitated and augmented with a virtual overlay that allows us to explore beyond our physical and social boundaries. Seoul was one of the first cities to announce that it will increasingly provide its public services through its own Metaverse platform. Soon after, various Chinese cities followed. So what services could be provided in the Metaverse in the cities of the future?

Virtual tourism

Seoul’s famous tourist attractions, such as Gwanghwamun Square, Deoksugung, and Namdaemun Market, are meant to be virtually created on the platform as a “special zone for a virtual tour.” Even the no longer existent, historical sites such as Donuimun can be renominated – or reincarnated – in this new virtual space. What is more, other tourist attractions, such as the Seoul Lantern Festival, will be held in the Metaverse so that everyone – no matter their location, disability status, or health status – can enjoy it.

“Metaverse is evolving into different forms based on technological levels and user demand. In particular, it is gaining traction as a new paradigm for post-COVID-19,” said Park Jong-Soo, Director General of Smart City Policy Bureau in Seoul.

He continued, “The SMG will pioneer a new continent called the Metaverse Seoul where public demand and private technologies are combined. For all age groups to enjoy the benefits, we will work on the Metaverse Seoul and make Seoul a smart, inclusive city.”

Virtual Education

Metaverse-enabled VR technology is already transforming the education industry in many cities.  The 2015 Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality: 7th International Conference mentioned Google Classroom as an example of augmented reality that can replace the physical classroom.  With an estimated 2.4 billion mobile Augmented Reality users worldwide by 2023, this is a viable channel for many more people to access training and education.

How does it work? AR technologies can help learners explore the real world and subjects interactively, often by displaying related information such as text and videos.  For a child exploring a local park, AR glasses could allow them to identify and learn more about each plant they encounter.  This type of practical learning is highly beneficial for children’s development.

Virtual Healthcare

Metaverse-adjacent technologies will provide new and innovative ways of looking after our health. Shanghai has recently allocated $1.5B to a Metaverse development fund, a part of which is to be spent on healthcare.

A study by Luma Tabbaa et al. (2019) evidenced how VR can help patients with Alzheimer’s disease.  VR tours provide a simulation that has helped dementia patients tap into old memories, resulting in positive mental stimulation and improved social interaction.  Patient recovery of earlier memories has also helped caregivers learn more about their patients’ past lives.  VR environments allow patients to experience things that they would not be able to otherwise, improving their overall well-being and mental health in the process.
In other patients with loss or lack of mobility, VR offers the possibility of exploring the world, and the cities they inhabit, on their terms.

Virtual Architecture

The challenge with the ‘Great Art’ has always been the limitations of turning ideas into reality, both physically and financially. VR changes that and unlocks a new world of possibility.  Architects and designers can play with, test, refine and gauge interest in design concepts in virtual space before physical construction.

3D and VR have been used to bring design concepts to life before they are built and manufactured, and virtual worlds offer new opportunities for very different design concepts.  This has been a popular approach with architects, property developers, and self-builders, who have built walk-though versions of their plans.

In March 2021, ‘Mars House‘ designed in May 2020 by Artist Krista Kim, became the first Metaverse home to be sold (for $500k).  The transparent virtual building was created using the 3D rendering platform Unreal Engine and “can be built in real life by glass furniture-makers in Italy,” according to Krista.

Mars House is a standalone virtual reality experience, which does not classify as virtual real estate per se.  However, the owner can have the design built in the physical world and an infinite number of virtual ones.

Conclusion

We live now in a world where interacting daily, moment by moment, on global digital platforms has become a natural, expected and essential part of our lives.  Today, we assemble and zoom in on each other in virtual offices, make and share digital art in virtual galleries and museums, play games together, and have a well-being workshop, all online. This can be seen as a growing Metaverse. Our cities can – and will – adjust to this new reality, creating augmented spaces that are more accessible, fair, disability-friendly, and above all, democratic.

The post Our Cities, Now More Digital Than Ever Before: Welcome to the Metaverse appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

The Metaverse will make Dubai’s economy smarter

There are currently over 1,000 companies in the metaverse and blockchain sector that are based in Dubai; a considerable number indeed. As the city modernises its virtual sector laws, it aims to support more than 40,000 virtual jobs by 2030 and add $4 billion to Dubai’s economy in five years.

For this reason, the emirate has recently announced the formation of a Higher Committee for Future Technology and Digital Economy chaired by His Highness the Crown Prince of Dubai. 

“We are working as a team to enhance Dubai’s position as a global birthplace and research laboratory for future technologies and one of the world’s top 10 metaverse economies, in line with the Dubai Metaverse Strategy,” said the Prince.

The Committee’s main goals will be to design policies and supervise the implementation of strategies related to the metaverse, AI, blockchain, Web3, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), the Internet of Things (IoT), data centers, and cloud computing.

The Metaverse companies

Dubai’s strategy has already started to pay off. Just recently, the crypto exchange Bybit has moved its global headquarters to Dubai, while Crypto.com and FTX have both announced that they would also move to the city.

What is more, some of Dubai’s largest companies are starting to enter the Metaverse market.

Amongst others, according to Fortune, 

“Dubai-based airline Emirates said in April that it would expand its use of the metaverse and NFTs. Damac Group, a conglomerate of businesses including global property development company Damac Properties and fashion house Roberto Cavalli, said in April it would invest $100 million to build digital cities in the metaverse. And UAE health care firm Thumbay Group plans to release a metaverse hospital by October of this year, where patients can consult with a doctor virtually”.

Beyond the Metaverse, the strategy that the Prince is promoting aims to support 5 main pillars: extended reality (which combines the physical and virtual worlds), augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, and digital twins (a virtual representation of an object or system).

“The technology pillars of the strategy are data, network, cloud, and edge computing, which focus on real-world data acquisition, validation, storage, processing, and management. Other pillars include promoting full 5G network deployment to enable edge computing and provide on-demand computer system resources. Instead of using the cloud, edge computing allows data to be collected, stored, and processed locally via smart devices and local networks.”

The smart-city revolution in the Metaverse

All of the past year’s achievements have enabled Dubai to, for the second year in a row, ve ranked as the smartest cities in the Middle East and North Africa region, as per the Smart City Index 2021. Compared to 2020, the Emirati city climbed up 14 places globally. 

Apart from the Metaverse strategy, the recent Dubai Plan 2021 aims to make Dubai a smart and sustainable city. The strategy’s goal is the transformation of about 1000 government services which focus on six key sectors namely: transportation, infrastructure, communications, economic services, urban planning and electricity.  

As His Highness the Crown Prince of Dubai has planned, the main products which will be supported include:

“Smart life, which deals with health, education, transport, communications, public utilities, and energy services. Smart economy, which deals with developing smart companies, port services, smart stock exchanges, smart jobs. Smart tourism, which deals with providing a smart and convenient environment for visitors to the emirate, including visa, flight, smart gates, and smart hotel services.”

Beyond the technology tools, Dubai has a happiness agenda. According to the official Digital Dubai website:

“We want to make Dubai the happiest city on earth. As we transform the future of Dubai through smart technology and innovation, we have prioritised happiness as our primary goal. By addressing the fundamental needs of our residents and visitors, we can enhance everybody’s short- and long-term happiness and wellbeing, and create a global benchmark for other cities to follow our lead.”

The Metaverse regulations

Dubai is the world’s first and only jurisdiction which has set up a dedicated virtual assets regulator. In March 2022, the Crown Prince introduced Dubai’s Virtual Assets Law (VAL) and established the VARA; a clear example of Dubai’s leadership in this sector. 

As he explained:

“The VARA regime is structured to catalyse collaboration and prioritise public protection. Our mission is to provide a progressive regulatory framework that can securely enable borderless economic opportunity across the global virtual assets Industry. Dubai is a global leader in adopting and adapting to new technologies. With VARA, the emirate is well-positioned to lead the global adoption and regulation of digital assets.”

The law manages to provide some clarity, investor and economic protection, as well as transparency, so companies can operate lawfully whilst at the same time complying with AML-CFT considerations in this rapidly growing domain.

His Excellency Helal Al Marri, Director General of the Dubai World Trade Centre Authority that is home to VARA, explained: 

“Virtual assets are transforming the financial world and are set to be the primary drivers of the future global economy. Establishing the world’s only independent regulator for virtual assets is symbolic of Dubai’s confidence in the potential of this sector.”

If Dubai indeed manages to increase its number of virtual jobs by fourth-fold by 2023, that is yet to be seen. Regardless, the groundwork has already been laid. There is no city currently (or country) that is taking the Metaverse so seriously which will likely allow it to reap the rewards in the future. It will be interesting to see if other countries will follow suit. Above all, Dubai can be called a truly “smart” city.

The post Dubai’s Crown Prince Vows to Add 40,000 New Jobs to Its Economy, in a New Metaverse Strategy Overhaul appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.