摘要：Tropical cyclones cause widespread damage in specific regions asa result of high winds and flooding. Direct impacts on commercial propertyand infrastructure can lead to production shortfalls. Further losses canoccur if business continuity is lost through disrupted supply of intermediateinputs from, or distribution to, other businesses. Given that producers inmodern economies are strongly interconnected, initially localised productionshortfalls can ripple through upstream supply-chain networks and severelyaffect regional and wider national economies. In this paper, we use acomprehensive, highly disaggregated and recent multi-region input–outputframework to analyse the negative impacts of Tropical Cyclone Debbie, whichbattered the north-eastern Australian coast in March 2017. In particular, weshow how industries and regions that were not directly affected by storm andflood damage suffered significant job and income losses throughout upstreamsupply chains. Our results indicate that the disaster resulted in the directloss of about 4802 full-time-equivalent jobs and AUD1544million of valueadded, and an additional indirect loss of 3685 jobs and AUD659million ofvalue added. The rapid and detailed assessment of the economic impact ofdisasters is made possible by the timely data provision and collaborativeenvironment facilitated by the Australian Industrial Ecology VirtualLaboratory (IELab).
