Safety is one part of a retirement decision, but it cannot be reduced responsibly to a single number. Retirement Lists therefore presents separate measures for violent crime, property crime, county-level natural-hazard context, historical disaster declarations, modeled international flood context, and national homicide context.
These measures answer different questions and operate at different geographic levels. They are not combined into an overall Safety score or a Local Risk score. A favorable result in one measure does not cancel an unfavorable result in another.
Safety evidence measure guide
| Measure | Geographic grain | Availability and use | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Violent crime | Eligible U.S. city agency or accepted consolidated city-county record | Display, filter, sort, and Compare when available | A separately scored annual violent-crime rate |
| Property crime | Eligible U.S. city agency or accepted consolidated city-county record | Display, filter, sort, and Compare when available | A separately scored annual property-crime rate |
| FEMA hazard components | U.S. county assigned to the city | Display and Compare; heat may also support filter and sort | County context for flood, storm, wildfire, or heat |
| Disaster declarations | U.S. county assigned to the city | Display only | A historical count of qualifying federal disaster declarations |
| International flood context | Modeled raster cells near an international destination | Display only | The share of sampled valid cells affected in the selected flood model |
| National homicide context | Country | Display only | Recent national homicide context, not a city crime measure |
Separate metric scores
Violent crime and property crime have separate metric scores. Neither metric improves, reduces, or contributes to an overall Safety score because Retirement Lists does not publish one.
Evidence periods and boundaries
| Evidence family | Evidence period and date boundary |
|---|---|
| Violent crime and property crime | Finalized 2024; seven eligible records use finalized 2023 as a fallback. Last reviewed August 1, 2026. |
| FEMA hazard components | Data period December 2025. Observed July 19, 2026 at 07:45:55.461 UTC. Last reviewed August 1, 2026. |
| Disaster declarations | January 1, 2000 through December 31, 2025. Retrieved July 18, 2026. Last reviewed August 1, 2026. |
| International flood context | Aqueduct Floods V2 historical baseline; 100-year return period. Checked July 13, 2026. Last reviewed August 1, 2026. |
| National homicide context | 2023 or 2022, depending on the latest eligible national value. Observed and retrieved July 18, 2026. Last reviewed August 1, 2026. |
Results from one source must not be substituted for, averaged with, or used to validate another.
Last reviewed means Retirement Lists’ editorial review of the methodology. It is not a source update, observation, retrieval, or data-generation date.
Limitations
These measures answer different questions and operate at different geographic levels. A county result is not city-, neighborhood-, parcel-, building-, or address-level evidence, a country result is not city-level evidence, and a modeled result is not a property or future-event prediction.
Use the separate measures to identify questions for further research. A favorable result in one measure does not cancel an unfavorable result in another.
Sources and review
Last reviewed 2026-08-01
- FBI Crime Data Explorer and Uniform Crime Reporting data
Eligible city-agency and accepted consolidated city-county violent-crime and property-crime evidence.
- FEMA National Risk Index data sets
U.S. county context for flood, storm, wildfire, and heat.
- FEMA National Risk Index county query service
FEMA National Risk Index county context assigned to a U.S. city.
- FEMA National Risk Index ArcGIS item
The FEMA county evidence layer used for local hazard context.
- OpenFEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries V2 documentation
Qualifying historical declarations for mapped U.S. counties.
- OpenFEMA Disaster Declarations Summaries API
The historical declaration records counted by the OpenFEMA method.
- WRI Aqueduct Floods 2.0
Approximate modeled flood context around international destinations.
- WRI Aqueduct Floods hazard-map dataset
The modeled raster source for international flood context.
- World Bank national homicide indicator
National homicide context where a sufficiently recent value exists.