'Safest cities' index site uses reviews, not statistics

MANILA, Philippines — A recent report released by collaborative online database Numbeo cited five cities in the Philippines as among the 10 safest cities in Southeast Asia.

It ranked Valenzuela City, despite killings there linked to the drug war, as the second safest city in the region after Singapore. President’s Rodrigo Duterte’s hometown, Davao City, placed fourth, while Makati City ranked fifth.

Baguio City and Cebu City also landed in the Top 10 at sixth and eighth places, respectively.

But since Numbeo uses users’ reviews to rank cities, the figures must be taken with a pinch of salt.

READ: 5 Philippine cities among 10 safest in Southeast Asia

‘Use at your own risk’

Numbeo claims it is “the world's largest database of user contributed data about cities and countries worldwide,” with, as of writing, “4,174,416 prices in 7,020 cities entered by 458,241 contributors.”

The website enables users to share and compare information about cost of living between cities and countries, reported consumer prices, perceived crime rates, quality of health care, among others.

Numbeo was launched in April 2009. Its founder and CEO is Mladen Adamovic, a former software engineer at Google.

The website’s ranking of safest cities is not based on official and confirmed statistics. Similar to Wikipedia, data is entered by various users worldwide.  

It said that questions for these surveys are similar to those asked in several scientific and government surveys.

“To generate a current index (which is always updated), we use data up to 36 months old. We include only cities where there are at least a certain number of contributors. Our semi-annual  index is remade twice per year by pushing current index into this historical view,” Numbeo said.

It can be noted that the Philippines has emerged as the social media capital of the world for the third year in a row.

READ: Philippines still world’s social media capital – study

Numbeo, on its website, posts a disclaimer: “Use our content at your own risk.”

“The structure of the project allows anyone with an internet connection to alter its content. Please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily been reviewed by people with the expertise required to provide you with complete accurate or reliable information,” it said.

Numbeo added: “No warranty whatsoever is made that any of the articles are accurate. There is absolutely no assurance that any statement contained at the website is correct or precise.”

In the 2017 edition of the Safe City Index, Manila was in the bottom 10 of the safest cities in the world to live in.

Manila ranked 55^th of the 60 cities covered by the study conducted by the research division of the London-based magazine The Economist. It did not mention the five cities cited in the Numbeo report as the Safe City Index only ranks major cities. 

READ: Safest cities in the world: Manila in bottom 10

From sleepy city to most dangerous in the world

In 2017, a certain Linus Trulsson managed to put Swedish city of Lund as the most dangerous place in the world, beating Caracas, Venezuela and San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

Trulsson gave Lund the worst possible ranking in all of the review categories, multiple times, to achieve the desired result.

“Numbeo should hardly be considered [statistics], it’s more like reviews. Anyone, anywhere in the world can change the data, as many times as they want completely anonymously. I managed to make Lund the world’s ‘most dangerous city’ in less than a day,” he was quoted as saying in reports.