Spatial data intelligence and city metaverse: A review

Spatial Data Intelligence (SDI) encompasses acquiring, storing, analyzing, mining, and visualizing spatial data to gain insights into the physical world and uncover valuable knowledge. These understandings and knowledge play a crucial role in connecting physical and virtual realms, such as in developing a City Metaverse (CM) aimed at enhancing and optimizing modern urban environments. The advancement of CM holds immense potential to benefit urban dwellers, making research on SDI an increasingly prominent area of focus. This paper contributes significantly by organizing the relevant research and technologies within a coherent framework. Firstly, we identify SDI technologies capable of collecting real-world information to construct a virtual CM. Subsequently, we delve into the technologies that can be compositely integrated with SDI to facilitate interaction with and management of actual cities from the virtual perspective. Additionally, we emphasize the effectiveness and potential of these methods in practical applications. Lastly, we conclude our survey by discussing emerging challenges associated with technological progress, the industrial chain, legal and regulatory aspects, and ethical and moral considerations.