Forbes Announces America's Safest Cities

Forbes used four different categories of "danger." In their safest city list, they used: Violent crime, Workplace deaths, Traffic deaths, and Natural disaster risk.

Of those categories, admittedly, one would think it's hard to quantify acts of God (natural disasters) in order to use that as a part of the safety cities criteria, but Forbes did it anyway. It wasn't easy.

Natural disaster risk used rankings from SustainLane.com. That site sifts through historical data on hurricanes, major flooding, tornado super-outbreaks, and earthquakes from government agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the United States Geological Survey, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and private outfit Risk Management Solutions.

Miami was rated to have the highest natural disaster risk. Part of the reason: frequncy. "San Francisco and Oakland are due for a 100-year quake, but these only happen every 100 or so years, while Miami is in a frequent hurricane path."

Violent crime, on the other hand, is pretty easy to quantify. The violent crime category is composed of four sub-categories: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

In terms of workplace deaths, you can see how that skews vs. the type of industry in an area. Dangerous jobs are more prevalent in industrial centers like Pittsburgh and Indianapolis. Workplace death rates in those area were five times higher than the safest ranked workplace region, Minneapolis.

Traffic fatalities, quite naturally, are influenced by the rapid transit systems, or lack thereof, in a given region.

Here are the top 5 safest cities, in reverse order, with categories listed and ranked.

4. Seattle, Wa. (tie)
Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Wash.
Violent crime: 3 of 40
Workplace deaths: 2 of 40
Traffic deaths: 8 of 40
Natural disaster risk: 31 of 40

4. Boston, Mass. (tie)
Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, Mass.-N.H.
Violent crime: 10 of 40
Workplace deaths: 5 of 40
Traffic deaths: 1 of 40
Natural disaster risk: 28 of 40

3. Portland, Ore.
Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton, Ore.-Wash.
Violent crime: 1 of 40
Workplace deaths: 10 of 40
Traffic deaths: 5 of 40
Natural disaster risk: 25 of 40

2. Milwaukee, Wis.
Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, Wis.
Violent crime: 24 of 40
Workplace deaths: 11 of 40
Traffic deaths: 4 of 40
Natural disaster risk: 1 of 40

1. Minneapolis, Minn.
Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI
Violent crime: 9 of 40
Workplace deaths: 1 of 40
Traffic deaths: 7 of 40
Natural disaster risk: 7 of 40

The full list can be found here.