SUSTAINABILITY ANALYSIS OF HOSTING THE SUMMER OLYMPIC GAMES.

The Olympic Games are the dream of many athletes. By performing, and especially by winning an Olympic medal, athletes make history. Unfortunately, in the last couple of decades this sporting mega-event has come into trouble. Due to high costs and pollution, the number of cities and states wanting to host has decreased as has the popularity of the games themselves. In response to the bad situation in which the Olympic Games find themselves, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), as the owner and organizer of the Games, decided to make moves that would improve the situation. The aim of this paper is to present and analyze the current state of the sustainability of the Summer Olympics, how this situation came about and what are the plans of the IOC for the future game in terms of sustainability. The paper will also try to find out through the simulation method whether it is possible to hold sustainable Olympic Games based on the IOC strategy. For the sake of better simulation and analysis, only the Summer editions of the Olympic Games are covered in the paper. Our simulations show that all three simulated hosts (Central Europe, Florida, and Shanghai) can host the Summer Olympic Games in a highly sustainable manner. All three hosts can utilize the existing and temporary infrastructure, which greatly reduces the environmental and social impact of the host as well as reducing costs. This can even lead to short-term and long-term profitable Olympic Games. In the end, it should be noted that the Florida region could be reduced in area without reducing the sustainability, while Shanghai could be extended to the local region and Central European games could add more nearby cities such as Krakow, Prague, Ljubljana or Zagreb to increase their sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]