What it measures
Two families of risk, scored separately and then combined: everyday crime and natural-hazard exposure. Crime covers street safety, property crime, and road safety. Hazards cover earthquake, wildfire, and flood risk. Each is scored 0–5, then the six combine into one safety score per city.
Why it matters
"Is it safe?" means different things to different people — and the honest answer is rarely one number. A city can have almost no street crime but sit on a fault line, or be crime-calm and flood-prone. Splitting crime from hazards lets you weigh the risks you care about instead of trusting a single blended verdict.
The six signals
- Street safety — violent and street crime.
- Property crime — theft, burglary, pickpocketing.
- Road safety — traffic-fatality risk.
- Earthquake — long-run seismic exposure.
- Wildfire — wildfire risk.
- Flooding — flood exposure.
Natural-hazard scores describe long-run exposure, not a forecast. A low wildfire score is a standing risk profile, not a prediction about next summer.
What it doesn't capture
- A country average hides the neighbourhood. National calm can mask a rough district — always research the specific area you'd live in.
- Hazards are exposure, not events. These scores reflect standing risk, not whether a specific disaster will strike.
- Crime data quality varies by country. Reporting rates and definitions differ, so cross-country crime comparisons are directional, not exact.
- It's not personal risk. Your own exposure depends on lifestyle, building, and where in a city you live.
Where the data comes from
Government crime statistics and global natural-hazard models. Crime draws on official statistics and established crime indices; the earthquake, wildfire, and flood scores come from global hazard models that cover every inhabited area. At the country level we population-weight the cities so the score reflects where people actually live (see Country verdicts).
Every country page has a safety section that splits crime from natural hazards and calls out the single biggest risk. Compare a few:
Or explore any hazard city-by-city on the explore map.