An important component of total cost in hosting the Winter Olympics is creating new infrastructure. Both sport and non-sport venues built to host the games, must be well-planned geographically and built with forethought concerning their sustainability and possible usefulness in the future. One of the ways that the host city Olympic planning committee can minimize costs is placing non-sport venues in optimal locations in relation to sport venues. By using a non-linear optimization model, I calculated the optimal location for the most important non-sport venue, the Lillehammer Olympic Village. By using the GPS coordinates from each sport venue, I ran an optimization model that produced the ideal Olympic Village location of 61.1254 latitude and 10.4803 longitude. Entering the coordinates into Google Maps shows that the location is merely farmland. Upon closer inspection, the Håkon Hall is extremely close to the ideal location.
After researching the actual location and construction of the Lillehammer Olympic Village, my model's optimal coordinates made more sense. The actual Olympic Village was established right behind the Håkon Hall and was a portable design intended to minimize cost and be disassembled at the games' conclusion. The actual location was exactly where my model placed it but the land has since been converted to farmland.
My non-linear optimization model reaffirmed that the location of the Lillehammer Olympic Village was optimal in relation to the locations of the sport venues. More importantly, the analysis provided additional information about current uses of venues which I will tour in person this summer as an extension of my research.
