Metaverse for Public Welfare and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

Metaverse is extremely popular at present in the gaming industry but can it accelerate the advancement of public services as defined by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs)? In particular, can metaverse provide any value to developing nations and how can the challenges and risks introduced by the metaverse be addressed through govrnment regulations and policies? This paper presents a systematic analysis of metaverse and utilizes the United Nations SDGs as a metric to explore public welfare aspects of metaverse. A digital transformation Lab is presented for rapid deployment and experimentation with metaverse.