Danish capital Copenhagen has outrun cities like Tokyo, Singapore and Osaka to become the world’s safest city in the latest edition of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU)’s Safe Cities Index.
According to CNBC, the city scored 82.4 points out of 100 in the study for the biennial Safe Cities Index which focused on five key aspects of urban security – digital, health, infrastructure, personal and environment.
The runners up were Toronto (82.2 points), Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo. The least safe cities were Lagos, Cairo, Caracas, Karachi and Yangon.
The Safe City Index ranked 60 cities across 76 security indicators to assess global urban security. No Indian city figured in the top-10 list.
It was also the first time that the EIU’s Safe City Index included the new metrics of environmental security. The new element takes stock of sustainability issues and climate adaptation measures post the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the report, Toronto and Copenhagen were found to have performed responsibly on the environment front.
The report said besides health security, the COVID-19 pandemic also impacted the rest of the security metrics of urban safety.
“COVID-19 has impacted all aspects of urban safety,” Pratima Singh, the project director of EIU’s Safe Cities Index told CNBC.
According to the report’s authors, there is a greater need for digital security as a chunk of the global workforce is now working online.
In many countries, personal safety was impacted due to change in patterns of crime during the lockdowns.
Singh said the findings should goad governments and policymakers to make more investments in safety and security measures, especially in politically and economically weaker countries.
Singh said the survey reflected how income was directly proportional to the security measures taken by a country.
“We are seeing very strong correlation between high income countries and performance on the index,” Singh said.
“We do see some of the higher income countries…also do well in infrastructure, while some of the lower income countries need to prioritize investments in infrastructure more and more,” she added.