Asian cities continue to lead in the third edition of the Safe Cities Index�Tokyo takes the top spot

• Tokyo edges Singapore (2nd) and Osaka (3rd)
  again to take the top spot in 2019.
• Alongside Tokyo, Singapore and Osaka, Sydney
  (5th), Seoul (tied 8th) and Melbourne (10th) make up the six APAC cities in the
  top 10.
• The remaining top ten cities are: Amsterdam (4th),
  Toronto (6th), Washington, DC (7th) and Copenhagen (tied 8th).
• The 2019 edition of the index includes ten new indicators, of which eight
  are related to environmental resilience.

SINGAPORE -�Media
OutReach
– 29 August 2019 – The Economist Intelligence Unit today releases the
third edition of the Safe Cities Index (SCI)
at the Safe Cities Summit in Singapore
. The index, which is the centre piece of a research
project sponsored by NEC Corporation, ranks 60 cities worldwide across five
continents. It measures the multifaceted nature of urban safety, with
indicators organised across four pillars: digital, infrastructure, health and
personal security.

 

Cities in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region make up six of the top ten safest
cities with Tokyo taking the top spot for the third time in a row. The Japanese
capital records the strongest performance in the digital security category, and
it has also risen eight places in the infrastructure security category since
2017.

 

Along with Tokyo, other APAC cities, as in the past, dominate the SCI2019.
Singapore and Osaka come second and third, while Sydney and Melbourne also make
the top ten. Although Hong Kong has dropped out of this group since 2017, Seoul
has joined the top taking eighth place with Copenhagen.

 

Naka Kondo, senior editor of The Economist Intelligence Unit, and editor of
the SCI2019 report, says:

“Our research shows that


a city’s region does not have any
statistically significant relationship with SCI2019 performance. Although APAC
cities such as Tokyo, Singapore and Osaka continue to rank within the top three
cities in the Index, the region also hosts some of the lowest scoring cities in
the world, with Yangon, Karachi and Dhaka close to the bottom of the list. APAC
cities perform well across the categories of health security, infrastructure
security and personal security, but their North American counterparts generally
fare better in digital security, accounting for seven of the top ten cities in
this category.”

     

The SCI2019
benefits from a major revision designed to better capture “urban
resilience”–the ability of cities to absorb and bounce back from shocks–a
concept that has had an increasing influence on thinking in urban safety over
the last decade, especially as policymakers worry about the implications of
climate change. The 2019 edition is the third, following the 2015 and 2017 editions.

 

The SCI2019 scores are not evenly spread, with a large number of cities
clustered at the top, and the rest showing wider variation in scores. Just ten
points separate the overall scores of the top 24 cities, while the following 36
are 40 points apart.

Overall ranking SCI2019
1	Tokyo	11	Chicago	21	Dallas	31	Beijing	41	Rio de Janeiro	51	Bogota
2	Singapore	12	Stockholm	22	Taipei	32	Shanghai	42	Sao Paulo	52	New Delhi
3	Osaka	13	San Francisco	23	Paris	33	Santiago	43	Manila	53	Jakarta
4	Amsterdam	14	London	24	Brussels	34	Buenos Aires	44	Johannesburg	54	Casablanca
5	Sydney	15	New York	25	Madrid	35	Kuala Lumpur	45	Lima =	55	Cairo
6	Toronto	16	Frankfurt	26	Barcelona	36	Istanbul	45	Mumbai =	56	Dhaka
7	Washington, DC	17	Los Angeles	27	Abu Dhabi	37	Moscow	47	Bangkok =	57	Karachi
8	Copenhagen =	18	Wellington =	28	Dubai	38	Kuwait City	47	Ho Chi Minh City =	58	Yangon
8	Seoul =	18	Zurich =	29	Milan	39	Riyadh	49	Baku	59	Caracas
10	Melbourne	20	Hong Kong	30	Rome	40	Mexico City	50	Quito	60	Lagos

 

 

Research shows that the performance of different safety pillars correlates
very closely with each other, signifying that different kinds of safety are
thoroughly intertwined. The top performers in each pillar are as follows:

Digital security

: Tokyo (1), Singapore (2),
Chicago (3), Washington, DC (4), Los Angeles/San Francisco (5)

Health security

: Osaka (1), Tokyo (2), Seoul
(3), Amsterdam (4), Stockholm (5)

Infrastructure security

: Singapore (1), Osaka (2), Barcelona (3), Tokyo
(4), Madrid (5)

Personal security

: Singapore (1), Copenhagen
(2), Hong Kong (3), Tokyo (4), Wellington (5)

 

The leading cities got the basics right, including easy access to
high-quality healthcare, dedicated cyber-security teams, community-based police
patrolling and/or disaster continuity planning. The accompanying SCI2019 report
explores the index results, incorporating 14 in-depth interviews with industry
experts around urban safety.

 

 “Overall,
while wealth is among the most important determinants of safety, the levels of
transparency–and governance–correlate as closely as income with index scores. Our
research shows the many ways that transparency and accountability are essential
in every pillar of urban security, from building safer bridges to developing
the trust needed for relevant stakeholders to share information on
cyber-attacks. The research also highlights how different types of safety are
thoroughly intertwined–that it is rare to find a city with very good results in
one safety pillar and lagging in others. Policies, service planning and
provision should also take this into account–and this year, we have decided to
convene stakeholders from around the world in a Safe Cities Summit to discuss
such matters around urban safety,” says Ms Kondo.

 

Visit safecities.economist.com for the full report, videos and
infographics

Notes to editors

About the Safe Cities Index (SCI) 2019

The SCI2019,
similarly to the previous two editions, is centred around digital security,
health security, infrastructure security and personal security. The 2019 index
ranks 60 cities across
57 indicators. The 2019 framework has been refined to better capture a city’s
climate change or disaster risk resilience/preparedness. For more on the index methodology,
please see the methodology appendix at the end of the report.  Please access this link
(http://safecities.economist.com) for the white paper, infographic and the
video.

Due to the
change in city coverage and additional indicators, direct year-on-year
comparisons between cities are not possible. Scores and rankings reflect the
relative performance of
a city and should be considered for the year in scope, especially due to
changes in methodology/indicators and cities in scope in the 2019 edition.

The 60 cities covered in the index are (in order
of the overall ranking):

North America: Toronto, Washington, DC, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Dallas.

Latin America: Santiago,
Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, São
Paulo, Mexico City, Lima, Quito, Bogota and Caracas.

Europe: Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, London, Frankfurt, Zurich, Brussels, Paris, Madrid,
Barcelona, Milan, Rome, Moscow and Istanbul.

Middle East and Africa: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Kuwait City, Riyadh, Johannesburg, Casablanca, Baku, Cairo and Lagos.

Asia-Pacific: Tokyo, Singapore, Osaka, Seoul, Sydney, Melbourne, Hong
Kong, Taipei, Wellington, Beijing, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur, Ho Chi Minh City,
Manila, Mumbai, Bangkok, New Delhi, Jakarta, Dhaka, Karachi and Yangon.

About The Economist Intelligence Unit

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About NEC Corporation

NEC Corporation is a leader in the integration of IT and network
technologies that benefit businesses and people around the world. The NEC Group
globally provides “Solutions for Society” that promote the safety, security,
efficiency and equality of society. Under the company’s corporate message of
“Orchestrating a brighter world”, NEC aims to help solve a wide range of
challenging issues and to create new social value for the changing world of
tomorrow. For more information, visit NEC at https://www.nec.com.