Index 2021
The Economist Intelligence Unit, sponsored by NEC, has released the Safe Cities Index 2021, covering 60 major urban areas. In its fourth edition, the Index consists of 76 sub indicators grouped under 5 domains.
What are the top ranking cities in 2021?
The fourth iteration of the index looks at 60 cities across 76 indicators, covering digital, health, infrastructure, personal, and - new this year - environmental security. The top 5 cities were Copenhagen, Toronto, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, in that order.
Safe Cities Index 2021
Safe Cities Index 2021 Whitepaper
The Economist Intelligence Unit, sponsored by NEC, has released the Safe Cities Index 2021, covering 60 major urban areas. In its fourth edition, the Index consists of 76 sub indicators grouped under 5 domains
Data Workbook
Explore and navigate the full data workbook of the 2021 Safe Cities Index
Urban safety benchmark tool
You can benchmark your city to any of the 60 cities in the index by answering 12 questions about safety. Your answers will be compared to the selected city and will allow you to get an idea of how the cities compare.
Safe Cities: Future proofing for tomorrow and beyond
Covid-19 is the first global pandemic since 2007, when the world became more urban than rural. The crisis has stretched cities’ resources, accelerated social and technological trends, and changed how we think about urban resilience.
Safe Cities Index
You can benchmark your city to any of the 60 cities in the index by answering 12 questions about safety. Your answers will be compared to the selected city and will allow you to get an idea of how the cities compare.
NEC Safer Cities Report
Population growth and urbanisation promote development and create value, but also bring about new risks. Learn how NEC is creating cities that are safe, secure, fair and efficient.
NEC Safer Cities
NEC’s technology solutions for creating safer cities cover the key areas of public safety, smart transportation, digital government, city management and digital health care.
NEC insights
Read news and case studies about how NEC technology is helping to build smarter, safer cities and intelligent business solutions that solve industrial and social challenges.
What does “safe” mean?
The Safe Cities Index was first launched in 2015 with 44 indicators and 50 cities. Since then, the index has been updated once every two years, increasing city coverage as well as strengthening the framework to include emerging challenges to urban safety. In 2021, the framework has been further updated to reflect the dynamic nature of the urban safety landscape with a special focus on the pandemic impact. It has also introduced a brand new pillar: environmental security.
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76 Sub indicators across 5 pillars
The Safe Cities Index is a global, policy benchmarking tool developed to measure urban safety. Our index score draws on 76 distinct factors across five broad pillars: personal, infrastructure, health, digital and environmental security. Within each pillar, the relevant indicators are grouped into inputs of safety — such as policies or personnel dedicated to some aspect of security — and outputs — anything from air pollution levels to crime rates."
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Current state and future preparedness
In short, outputs measure how safe a city currently is, while the inputs indicate which cities are doing the right things to enhance security. Both are essential to understanding the security situation."
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Reflective of external environment
Any index that measures over time needs to evolve along with the field it covers. Increasing number of urban governments are reshaping their approach to include low-frequency, high risk events, whether involving pandemics, acute disasters or longer-term threats, notably climate change and chronic social stresses.
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Incorporating environmental security
Many cities are moving towards planning based around 'sustainability' — a concept which moves away from purely after-the-fact response (grow now and green later) to include system-wide preparedness to climate risks. The 2021 index has established for the first time a standalone pillar measuring environmental security, taking into account policy inputs aimed at improving the health of the natural and physical environment in urban areas, and output indicators such as urban tree cover and the rate of water stress in cities. "
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Safe Cities Archive
Safe Cities Index 2019
The Safe Cities Index 2019 is a report from The Economist Intelligence Unit sponsored by NEC. The report is based on the third iteration of the index, which ranks 60 cities across 57 indicators covering digital security, health security, infrastructure security and personal security
Safe Cities Index 2017
The Safe Cities Index 2017 is a report from The Economist Intelligence Unit sponsored by NEC. The report is based on the second iteration of the index, which ranks 60 cities across 49 indicators covering digital security, health security, infrastructure security and personal security.
Safe Cities Index 2015
The Safe Cities Index 2015 is an Economist Intelligence Unit report, sponsored by NEC. The report is based on an index composed of more than 40 quantitative and qualitative indicators. These indicators are split across four thematic categories: digital security; health security; infrastructure safety; and personal safety.