Exploring the Potential of Citiverses for Regulatory Learning
It addresses the problem of improving regulatory learning for policymakers and researchers through immersive simulations, but it is incremental as it builds on existing concepts like test beds and sandboxes.
This paper proposes a science-for-policy agenda to explore citiverses as virtual environments for experimenting with policy scenarios, identifying key research areas like scalability and ethical considerations, and analyzing experimental topics in transportation and climate to advance regulatory learning.
Citiverses hold the potential to support regulatory learning by offering immersive, virtual environments for experimenting with policy scenarios and technologies. This paper proposes a science-for-policy agenda to explore the potential of citiverses as experimentation spaces for regulatory learning, grounded in a consultation with a high-level panel of experts, including policymakers from the European Commission, national government science advisers and leading researchers in digital regulation and virtual worlds. It identifies key research areas, including scalability, real-time feedback, complexity modelling, cross-border collaboration, risk reduction, citizen participation, ethical considerations and the integration of emerging technologies. In addition, the paper analyses a set of experimental topics, spanning transportation, urban planning and the environment/climate crisis, that could be tested in citiverse platforms to advance regulatory learning in these areas. The proposed work is designed to inform future research for policy and emphasizes a responsible approach to developing and using citiverses. It prioritizes careful consideration of the ethical, economic, ecological and social dimensions of different regulations. The paper also explores essential preliminary steps necessary for integrating citiverses into the broader ecosystems of experimentation spaces, including test beds, living labs and regulatory sandboxes