Crisis Management in the Metaverse: Designing Virtual Worlds for Real-World Resilience

Given the complexity of contemporary crises—from natural disasters to pandemics—there is a critical need for innovative crisis management solutions. Crisis managers must rapidly verify and prioritize information, while the technologies for processing and analyzing this data become crucial for effective knowledge management and bolstering resilience. With its ability to create immersive virtual environments, the metaverse emerges as a transformative tool in this area. This study employs a design science research approach to develop a metaverse platform based on the ADAPT framework. Through three iterative design cycles, we enhance the application of metaverse technologies in crisis management using insights from interviews with 18 crisis management experts and focus groups that included crisis managers and metaverse specialists. Our findings outline how metaverse technologies could significantly boost crisis management effectiveness. These advancements will strengthen resilience in both virtual and real-world scenarios, bridging the gap between digital simulations and practical crisis response.