The metaverse aims to blur the boundary between the physical world and digital content. To achieve this goal, the metaverse relies heavily on extended reality (XR), the Internet of Things, and communication technologies. Concurrently, connected vehicles and intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) are envisioned as the future paradigm of driving and becoming reality thanks to increasingly powerful onboard vehicular processing capacity and advanced vehicle-to-everything networking technologies.

With the acceleration of urbanisation in China, land shortage has become a severe problem in metropolises. As the medium and shallow underground space in central urban areas has been developed to a matured or even saturated extent, development of deep underground space (DUS) becomes inevitable. Based on the DUS utilisation planning in Shanghai, the depth classification and the conceptual model of DUS utilisation are discussed. Furthermore, deep geological conditions in Shanghai are described and the corresponding impact on deep foundation pit engineering and shield tunneling are analysed. Finally, a deep sewage tunnel system under construction in Shanghai is introduced as a case study.