Helsinki XR Center, the City of Espoo, and Cluster have turned the Espoonlahti Health Centre into a social digital twin in the metaverse. The prototype, created within the AI Start project under the Immersive Sustainability Lab, presents the building and its emergency evacuation protocol in an accessible, playful way for citizens. It also serves as a testbed for cityverse ideas, where XR, AI assisted workflows, and urban digital twins support communication, safety, and participation.
Text by Janset Shawash
Finland has moved fast on metaverse and digital twin development, from the national Metaverse Initiative and Metaverse Finland ecosystem to city driven networks like FINverse that explore how municipalities can use virtual worlds in daily urban development. At the same time, European and Nordic partners are experimenting with “citiverse” ideas, where digital twins become shared immersive spaces for planning, communication, and participation.
At Helsinki XR Center, our role in the AI Start project and the Immersive Sustainability Lab is to help cities navigate this landscape in practice: testing tools, building prototypes, and exploring how XR and AI assisted workflows can support real urban challenges instead of remaining abstract concepts.
One of these experiments is our new Proof of Concept (PoC) with the City of Espoo, where we brought the Espoonlahti Health Centre into Cluster’s metaverse platform as a playful, social digital twin. This work is part of Espoo’s broader vision to expand its urban digital twin and experiment with cityverse environments.
Why Cluster? From Social Worlds to Industrial Twins
Cluster is a Japanese metaverse platform that lets people gather in shared virtual spaces from smartphones, PCs, tablets, browsers, and VR headsets. Users create avatars, join 3D worlds, communicate via text and voice chat, and participate in events that range from concerts to conferences. The platform is used by millions of users and has one of the strongest corporate track records in Japan.
Beyond entertainment, Cluster now positions itself as an industrial metaverse platform. It supports the use of BIM and CAD data to build digital twins of physical spaces, and offers AI enabled features for integrating data, optimizing scenes, and supporting multi user interaction. This makes it a natural match for our interests in urban digital twins, interoperability, and AI assisted pipelines that move complex 3D models into accessible, social environments.
A Playful Evacuation Twin for Espoonlahti Health Centre
For this Proof of Concept, Espoo selected the Espoonlahti Health Centre as a concrete and familiar case. Inside Cluster, the building appears as a shared virtual environment that residents, city staff, and partners can visit with their avatars from home, the office, or a VR headset.
The focus of this first iteration is emergency evacuation. Instead of a static floor plan on a wall, visitors move through the virtual health centre, follow evacuation routes, and experience the protocol as a guided, interactive journey. Clear visual cues and light playful elements turn a serious topic into an engaging learning experience that people can revisit as often as they like.
Because Cluster is inherently social, the Espoonlahti twin also works as a meeting and participation space. For example, visitors can:
- Explore information rich hotspots that explain spaces, services, and safety features
- Leave comments and observations for planners and facility managers
- Test and discuss different scenarios before they are implemented in the physical building
In this way, the same environment functions both as a citizen communication tool and as a participation platform.
From Espoonlahti to FINverse and the Cityverse
The Espoonlahti pilot sits within a wider Finnish movement, in which cities such as Espoo and Oulu are active in the FINverse national metaverse network and in building local metaverse ecosystems like the Ouluverse. These initiatives explore how XR, digital twins, and AI can support urban planning, communication, and public engagement.
Our Espoonlahti Health Centre Proof of Concept was also showcased in the City Digital Twin Sandbox at Match XR 2025, alongside other urban twin demos from Finnish and international partners. The sandbox attracted strong interest from local and international visitors, underlining the demand for accessible, human centered digital twin applications that people can actually step into and try.
With AI Start and the Immersive Sustainability Lab, Helsinki XR Center aims to be a practical partner for cities on this journey: experimenting with XR and AI assisted workflows, connecting municipal needs with platforms like Cluster, and turning high level strategies into tangible experiences that support citizen awareness and participation.
Key Stakeholders and Collaboration
AIStart Incubator is an EU co-funded program led by Haaga Helia UAS with the cities of Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa and Metropolia UAS (Helsinki XR Center) as partners. It helps SMEs in the Helsinki region adopt AI through hands-on support, tailored training and access to diverse testing platforms, and forms part of the wider HEVinnovations program to strengthen regional innovation.
Espoonlahti Health Center project was initiated with City of Espoo in collaboration with Cluster.
The project was carried out through close collaboration between the City of Espoo, represented by Noman Nasery; Cluster, represented by Sheila Miyata and Takushi Kamegai; and Metropolia University of Applied Sciences / Helsinki XR Center, with a team consisting of Janina Rannikko (Project Manager), Janset Shawash (Project XR Expert), Narmeen Marji (XR Expert), Leevi Rantala (Project Development Lead), Alicia Sudlerd (Project Code Lead), Andrii Deshko (Code Trainee), Meiju Alihaanvirta (Art Trainee), and Ella Räntilä (Art Trainee).
For more information, contact Janina Rannikko (janina.rannikko@metropolia.fi) or Janset Shawash (janset.shawash@metropolia.fi).
AI Start Incubator is a collaboration of:
