Unintentional death and injury in the workplace is a significant contributor to overall safety outcomes. Safety outcomes can be partially correlated with the extent to which a society implements measures to protect its workforce from workplace safety hazards. In most industrialized and rapidly developing nations it is typical for the employed to spend nearly one third of their working lives in the workplace. This represents a substantial potential for unintentional injuries. According to the World Safety and Health Institute, there were an estimated 2.78 million fatal occupational injuries, and 374 million non-fatal occupational injuries in 2015.
The OSH Indicator addresses the extent to which a nation has implemented the legislative and regulatory mechanisms necessary to ensure the proper protection of its workforce from the hazards arising out of work. The OSH Indicator arrives at a numeric value through a process of interpreting and quantifying the descriptive information on a nation’s regulatory framework supporting workplace safety and health captured by the International Labor Organization’s Global Database on Occupational Safety and Health Legislation (LEGOSH).
2018Occupational Safety and Health Capacity in the European UnionA UL Safety Index Topical ReportKapp, E.A.Download
2018Opportunities for Improving Safety & Health in Vietnam’s Manufacturing SectorA UL Safety Index Topical ReportKapp, E.A.Download
2018UL Safety Index Summit: BangkokOccupational Safety & Health in ThailandSudthida Krungkraiwong (Thai Institute of Occupational Safety & Health)Download
2018The burden of disease in Russia from 1980 to 2016A systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016GBD 2016 Russia CollaboratorsDownload
2015Advancing a sociotechnical systems approach to workplace safetydeveloping the conceptual frameworkCarayon, P.; Hancock, P.; Leveson, N.; Noy, I.; Sznelway, L.; van Hootegem, G. Download
Raw Values
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
OSH Framework
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.
About
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.
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!
New for 2017
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.
Table 1 - Countries with the Highest UL Safety Index 2017
2017 Rank
2016 Rank
1
The Netherlands
The Netherlands
2
Norway
Norway
3
Australia
Denmark
4
Sweden
Sweden
5
Canada
Australia
Table 2- Countries with the Lowest UL Safety Index 2017
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.
What Does The UL Safety Index Represent?
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, OSH Framework, 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.
What is not measured in the UL Safety Index?
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.
Calculating the UL Safety Index
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 OSH Framework.
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.
Data Sources
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
OSH Framework
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 Consumer Protections indicator, which is based on a Consumers International survey of its members, 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.