ABSTRACT
The environmental cost of disaster-related emergency supplies is significant. However, little research has been conducted on the estimation of emergency-supply transportation-related carbon emissions. This study created an "emergency supply emission estimation methodology" (ESEEM). The CO2 emissions from the global air dispatch of COVID-19 vaccines were estimated using two hypothetical scenarios of one dose per capita and additional doses secured. The robustness of the model was tested with the Monte Carlo Simulation method (MCM) based one-sample t-test. The model was validated using the "Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement (GUM)" and GUM's MCM approaches. The results showed that to dispatch at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to 7.8 billion people, nearly 8000 Boeing 747 flights will be needed, releasing approximately 8.1 ± 0.30 metric kilotons (kt) of CO2. As countries secure additional doses, these figures will increase to 14,912 flights and about 15 ± 0.48 kt of CO2. According to the variance-based sensitivity analysis, the total number of doses (population), technology, and wealth play a significant role in determining CO2 emissions across nations. Thus, wealthy nations' long-term population reduction efforts, technological advancements, and mitigation efforts can benefit the environment as a whole and the CO2 burdens associated with current COVID-19 and any future disasters' emergency-supply transportation.
ABSTRACT
Since December 2019, the COVID-19 epidemic has been spreading continuously in China and many countries in the world, causing widespread concern among the whole society. To cope with the epidemic disaster, most provinces and cities in China have adopted prevention and control measures such as home isolation, blocking transportation, and extending the Spring Festival holiday, which has caused a serious impact on China's output of various sectors, international trade, and labor employment, ultimately generating great losses to the Chinese economic system in 2020. But how big is the loss? How can we assess this for a country? At present, there are few analyses based on quantitative models to answer these important questions. In the following, we describe a quantitative-based approach of assessing the potential impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on the economic system and the sectors taking China as the base case. The proposed approach can provide timely data and quantitative tools to support the complex decision-making process that government agencies (and the private sector) need to manage to respond to this tragic epidemic and maintain stable economic development. Based on the available data, this article proposes a hypothetical scenario and then adopts the Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model to calculate the comprehensive economic losses of the epidemic from the aspects of the direct shock on the output of seriously affected sectors, international trade, and labor force. The empirical results show that assuming a GDP growth rate of 4-8% in the absence of COVID-19, GDP growth in 2020 would be -8.77 to -12.77% after the COVID-19. Companies and activities associated with transportation and service sectors are among the most impacted, and companies and supply chains related to the manufacturing subsector lead the economic losses. Finally, according to the calculation results, the corresponding countermeasures and suggestions are put forward: disaster recovery for key sectors such as the labor force, transportation sector, and service sectors should be enhanced; disaster emergency rescue work in highly sensitive sectors should be carried out; in the long run, precise measures to strengthen the refined management of disaster risk with big data resources and means should be taken.