E-government and policy simulation in intelligent virtual environments

Recently, there has been an increase of interest in the social impact of virtual reality technologies, as virtual worlds experienced an increase of their popularity in various social groups (teenagers, businesses). The growing trend for people to spend more time in suchlike virtual spaces implies a demand for intelligent virtual environments, that could mimic the real world as a simulation and provide functionalities and tools for behaviour analysis and adaptation to user preferences. Within the context of e-government, this paper presents the ongoing project +Spaces, which is developing a range of virtual environment tools. The platform architecture is presented and technical challenges involved in creating intelligent virtual spaces for e-government as well as draft policies to be used in role-playing simulations are discussed.