Rethinking impact assessment for Olympic mega-events: A tiered framework for sustainability, equity, and legacy governance in Brisbane 2032

With six years remaining until the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, this viewpoint examines whether conventional impact assessment approaches are adequate for governing the cumulative, cross-scalar, and long-term impacts of mega-events. The Olympic and Paralympic Games generate governance and assessment challenges that extend beyond the scope of traditional project-based environmental impact assessment (EIA), including multiple interdependent developments, compressed delivery timeframes, event-phase operational pressures, regional infrastructure transformations, long-term legacy commitments, and uneven social and environmental impacts. Drawing on international Olympic experiences and impact assessment scholarship, this viewpoint identifies critical limitations of project-level EIA in addressing cumulative, indirect, induced, and legacy effects across spatial and temporal scales. In response, it proposes a tiered impact assessment framework tailored to the Brisbane 2032 context and informed by Australia's regulatory environment. The framework integrates four mutually reinforcing tiers: (a) strategic regional assessment, (b) program- and precinct-scale assessment, (c) project-level EIA and environmental impact statement processes, and (d) adaptive follow-up, monitoring, and legacy stewardship. The viewpoint argues that a tiered and integrated approach can strengthen accountability, improve cumulative impact governance, enhance inter-agency coordination, and support more sustainable, equitable, and enduring legacy outcomes for mega-event host cities.