Best practice: Paris 2024 leads the way on data analysis
Many core decisions about Games delivery must increasingly be driven by insights derived from reliable data sources. The IOC has been working on a range of data and analytics initiatives since London 2012. They are now a fundamental component of what IKL does with the OCOGs, and are evolving rapidly. Paris 2024 is the first OCOG to have invested in employing an expert fully dedicated to data analytics to optimise Games planning and operations. During the OCOG IKL Workshop, held at the end of June, Kevin Martel, Manager for Games Knowledge and Data at Paris 2024, explained his mission and how he works with the functional areas so they can make the best use of the data available.
Preventing a waste of resources
“Data analysis plays a critical role in our Games preparations, especially when it comes to establishing and refining the planning assumptions which impact the resources that we will deploy. This refers to areas such as transport, security, food and beverage and press operations, to name just a few. It’s important to avoid planning for peak days only and thereby prevent a waste of resources,” said Martel. He added: “Looking at Games time, data capture and analysis will help us validate planning assumptions during the first few days and take more efficient and quicker decisions.”
Leveraging data from previous Games editions
The data Paris 2024 is leveraging comes from previous Games editions. The IOC’s efforts in data capture go back to London 2012 and have become more and more sophisticated over the years. In the run-up to Tokyo 2020, the IOC coordinated closely with Paris 2024 to make sure the data sets needed were collected, structured and cleaned. Subsequently, the IOC, together with Paris 2024, developed detailed dashboards on venue access and accreditation using data from the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020. These interactive and dynamic dashboards, hosted on Alibaba Cloud, enable end-users to analyse the wealth of data from Tokyo and gain insights on the accredited population groups, whilst taking into account the context of the global pandemic and the postponement of this Games edition.
Martel said: “Thanks to these dashboards, anyone at Paris 2024 can understand easily who came to which venue – competition and non-competition - and related events. The dashboards allow users to analyse the volume of stakeholders per venue, the behaviour of the stakeholders (arrival pattern), the volume of accreditation and the accreditation process.That’s valuable information for many different FAs, but of course needs to be put into the very specific context of Tokyo 2020, held amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, my task is to promote the tool internally to ensure its best usage. It’s about making data user-friendly and meaningful.”
Responding to end-user needs
The objective is to empower the FAs to explore the data and ask questions that will help refine the planning assumptions. Moreover, the FAs’ feedback was central in driving the creation of each page, each visualisation and each metric. As part of an iterative approach, end-user feedback was collected after each version regarding what worked or did not, additional questions or insights required from the data, and even related interaction and consumption patterns. Thanks to this procedure, the reports have been shaped to respond to specific end-user needs and questions, and the process of refining and iterating is ongoing.
“This was a pilot, and we are looking forward to using the Tokyo 2020 data, but also data sets from Rio 2016 and London 2012, for new dashboards developed by the IOC in areas like the Olympic Village, seating bowl analysis and venue legacy,” explained Martel.
Tokyo 2020 specificities
Whilst the level of data collected during Tokyo 2020 was the most sophisticated to date, the special circumstances of this Games edition, held during a global pandemic, clearly impacted the data. Therefore, it cannot, or should not, represent the reality of all Games aspects. For instance, in Tokyo there were no ticketed spectators at most of the competition venues. In addition, numbers for the accreditation populations were reduced, with limited or controlled movement between venues due to the restrictions. To put the Tokyo data into context, the IOC and Paris 2024 undertook an analysis comparing numbers with previous Games editions (Rio 2016 and London 2012). This analysis revealed that some of the accredited population groups in Tokyo were very similar in numbers to previous Games editions, and the differences for some were not that significant. However, this is only one view of it and does not take into account the operational plans and flows for a normal Games edition. Therefore, caution is required before making any decisions or drawing any conclusions based solely on the Tokyo 2020 data.
“This kind of analysis wouldn’t have been possible without our close collaboration with the IOC,” concludes Martel. “It’s great they already started with data capture back in 2012, when it wasn’t that easy to anticipate the value of such data sets for future Games organisers.”
Measuring the effectiveness of the Games will remain key to improving Games efficiency and preventing an over delivery of services which can be highly expensive.