Raw values are included for the UL Safety Index indicators to assist researchers in understanding the overall magnitude or context for the indicator. These data are reproduced from the underlying data sets from the original sources, such as the World Bank, IHME and others. The raw values and their units vary based on the indicator:
| Indicator | Units | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Education | Index (0 to 1) – no units | United Nations Development Programme |
| GDP per Capita | USD/person | World Bank |
| Government Effectiveness | Index (-2.5 to +2.5 – no units | World Economic Forum |
| Technology | Index (1 to 7) – no units | World Economic Forum |
| Codes & Standards | Score (0 to 8) – no units | Underwriters Laboratories |
| Consumer Protections | Index (0 to 1) – no units | Consumers International |
| Labor Protections | Index (0 to 100) – no units | Underwriters Laboratories |
| Road Safety Framework | Score (0 to 17.6) – no units | Underwriters Laboratories |
| Drowning | Disability Adjusted Life Years/100,000 persons | Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation |
| Exposure to Forces of Nature, Disaster | Disability Adjusted Life Years/100,000 persons | Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation |
| Exposure to Mechanical Forces | Disability Adjusted Life Years/100,000 persons | Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation |
| Falls | Disability Adjusted Life Years/100,000 persons | Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation |
| Fires, Heat and Hot Substances | Disability Adjusted Life Years/100,000 persons | Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation |
| Foreign Body | Disability Adjusted Life Years/100,000 persons | Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation |
| Other Unintentional Injuries | Disability Adjusted Life Years/100,000 persons | Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation |
| Poisoning | Disability Adjusted Life Years/100,000 persons | Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation |
| Transport Injuries | Disability Adjusted Life Years/100,000 persons | Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation |
For more detail, refer to The Methodology of the UL Safety Index, 2017.
The UL Safety Index is a data science initiative intended to increase the global awareness of health, security, sustainability and safety through information, dialog and collaboration. Through engagement with partners throughout the world, our vision is to advance safe living and working environments for people everywhere by providing better data and metrics to guide decision making and investments.
The data of UL Safety Index are made available under the Open Database Contents License: http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/dbcl/1.0/
Based on your feedback, we are pleased to introduce several UL Safety Index site updates designed to improve your overall site experience. First, we’ve refined the Library by adding resource-specific search filters and a featured content section that highlights the latest arrivals to the collection. You can now also access the Library from anywhere on the site. We believe these simple but important enhancements will enable you to more easily search and leverage the Library assets that are of most interest to you.
Second, we improved the country data comparison capability by providing a synchronized scroll feature. This allows you to simultaneously scroll through multiple countries’ data while maintaining a visual side-by-side comparison. Whether reviewing two or five countries, you can more easily and efficiently compare data sets. Finally, we’ve added a News section so you can learn the latest from the UL Safety Index, including upcoming events, thought leadership insights, related research and case studies. Coming in November, UL Safety Index data will be updated using the latest available sources. These new data will result in updated scores and rankings for each country. We will announce the availability of the new scores and rankings when the data update is complete.
In the meantime, the UL Safety Index team is listening and welcomes your feedback. Please let us know how we can continuously improve the Safety Index to better serve your needs!
The UL Safety Index™ was unveiled in September 2016 at the 12th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion. Since then, academic leaders and practitioners in safety have provided input to the UL Safety Index, resulting in improvements to the algorithm, a new indicator, and updated data. The 2017 release of the UL Safety Index includes updated data for many of the indicators, together resulting in a more refined view of relative safety around the world, and, of course, new rankings. Additionally, a new resource library of injury prevention strategies, policies, and research can assist stakeholders around the world to improve safety.
Another update for 2017 is the inclusion of a new Safety Frameworks Indicator – Road Safety Framework. Based on the Global Status Report on Road Safety 2015 from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Indicator measures the adoption of key regulations and best practices to reduce the burden of injuries from traffic crashes. The Indicator has 44 sub-measures in the areas of Institutional Framework, Safer Vehicle Standards, Safer Roads and Mobility, Safer Road Users, and Post-Crash Care. Developed countries generally have higher adoption of these practices, with Norway, France, Australia, the Czech Republic, and Luxembourg having the top scores for this indicator. Smaller, developing nations, including many island nations are at the lower end of the Indicator. The countries with the lowest value of this Indicator are Micronesia, Afghanistan, Liberia, Guinea-Bissau, and Somalia. A detailed description of the Indicator and the scoring rubric are contained in The Methodology of the UL Safety Index™. Inclusion of the Road Safety Framework in Safety Frameworks reduced the mean value of the Safety Frameworks Driver by 2.86 and the mean value of the UL Safety Index by 0.74. The impact on rankings was an average movement of 4.88 positions with the smallest movement being 0 (several countries) and the largest being Andorra, with a positive movement of 70 positions from 163rd to 93rd due to a strong Road Safety Framework, while other Indicators in Safety Frameworks are relatively weak.
In 2017, The Netherlands remains at the top of the list of relative safety in the UL Safety Index. Australia moves up two positions to number three, right behind Norway, whose ranking is at number two as it was in 2016. Sweden remains at number four, and Canada moves from seventh to number five. At the bottom of the scale, Sub-Saharan Africa continues to have significant challenges, holding all five of the positions with the lowest level of relative safety, as measured by the UL Safety Index. Somalia replaced South Sudan at the bottom of the list, although South Sudan rose only one position. The remaining countries in the bottom five are Guinea-Bissau, The Central African Republic and Djibouti.
| 2017 Rank | 2016 Rank | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Netherlands | The Netherlands |
| 2 | Norway | Norway |
| 3 | Australia | Denmark |
| 4 | Sweden | Sweden |
| 5 | Canada | Australia |
| 2017 Rank | 2016 Rank | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Djibouti | North Korea |
| 2 | Central African Republic | Burundi |
| 3 | Guinea-Bissau | Djibouti |
| 4 | South Sudan | Somalia |
| 5 | Somalia | South Sudan |
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The UL Safety Index is based on the following model of safety:
Incidents of injury, disability and death (lack of safety) are a function of the interaction of people and hazards, amplified or mitigated by socioeconomic forces, protective frameworks, safety interventions and behavior.
Our conceptual model is translated into a quantitative model through the normalization and aggregation of 17 data sets reflecting national-level social, economic and safety data. These indicators are combined into three drivers, each measuring a specific aspect of safety. This section provides an overview of how the UL Safety Index is calculated. For a more thorough review, download the Methodology of the UL Safety Index.
The UL Safety Index quantifies the influence of social forces, protective frameworks and specific outcomes related to unintentional injury. These drivers were selected through research that safety, and health outcomes are influenced by the physical and social environment, as well as individuals and their behavior. The three drivers provide a diverse sampling of data across the physical, social and behavioral domains.
The indicators are measures of economic output, education, technology, governance, codes and standards, consumer protections, labor protections, road safety frameworks and health outcomes. Health outcomes are used as a proxy for human behavior, as at a national level, behavior is too complex to measure. The indicators in the Institutions & Resources and Safety Frameworks drivers have been shown correlated with improve safety outcomes at a statistically significant level.
Intentional injury (crime, terrorism, war and suicide) are not included in the UL Safety Index. There are several indices and data sets available on these topics through other organizations. Other aspects of security, health, sustainability and wellbeing are being evaluated for inclusion in the Index. Future updates may include these aspects of a comprehensive measurement of safety.
Normalizing the input indicators: The source data for the sixteen indicators that are used in the Safety Index algorithm have differing scales and values. In order to normalize the data for use in the algorithm, the base data were converted into indices between 0 and 100. The indices were calculated using the formula below:
Thus, the index for the best performing country on a specific indicator will be 100, and the worst-performing country will be 0.
Combining indicators to form drivers: The Institutions & Resources Driver is assessed through the arithmetic mean of the indicators of Wealth, Technology, Government Effectiveness and Education.
The Safety Framework of each country is quantified by the use of the arithmetic mean of the indicators for Codes and Standards, Consumer Protections and Labor Protections.
Finally, Safety Outcomes are assessed through the arithmetic mean of the normalized indicators reflecting the Disability Adjusted Life Years per 100,000 of population for causes associated with unintentional injury.
When an indicator for a particular driver is not available for one or more countries, this indicator is not included in the numerator and the denominator is reduced appropriately. For example, if the indicator for Consumer Protections is not available for a country, the resulting Safety Frameworks driver for that country would be calculated as:
Use of this technique ensures that no country is penalized or rewarded for missing indicator data.
The UL Safety Index uses data from multilateral organizations, government agencies, and academic collaborations. Primary sources of data are The World Bank, UN Development Programme, World Economic Forum, Consumers International, the World Health Organization and Underwriters Laboratories (UL).
| Index | Driver | Indicator | Data Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| The UL Safety Index | Institutions & Resources | GDP per capita | World Bank |
| Education | UN Development Programme | ||
| Government Effectiveness | World Bank | ||
| Technology | World Economic Forum | ||
| Safety Frameworks | Codes and Standards | UL | |
| Consumer Protections | Consumers International | ||
| Labor Protections | UL | ||
| Road Safety Framework | World Health Organization | ||
| Safety Outcomes | Transport Injuries | Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation | |
| Falls | |||
| Drowning | |||
| Fires, heat and hot substances | |||
| Poisoning | |||
| Exposure to mechanical forces | |||
| Injuries due to foreign bodies | |||
| Exposure to forces of nature | |||
| Other unintentional injury |
With the exception of the Labor Protections indicator, which is based on UL’s Labor Rights Index, all sources of data are publicly available and include official statistics measured and formally reported by governments to international organizations. These data may or may not be independently verified but are included only if formally reported to international organizations. The UL Safety Index does not include ad hoc data submitted by governments directly to the UL team.