City Ease Index (CEI) is a rating of how much at ease residents feel in their respective cities across the world. The research considers numerous safety-related aspects of city life as well as other possible sources of unease such as economic security. The CEI is also published annually along with PEI.
As simplified below, factors taken into account include the leadership performance, safety infrastructure, and prevalence of sources of unease.
CEI Research Model = 0.4 * Overall ease + 0.6 * (Leadership + Infrastructure + Program + Emergency Response + Incident Frequency)
The leadership rating is determined by how proactive the mayor or other leaders of the city have been towards improving safety and reducing sources of unease. Although they are prescribed by duty to be highly concerned with city residents' quality of life, some leaders may take a less active approach in working to make positive changes. Safety infrastructure and programs - other categories factored into CEI calculations - are managed by the city leadership, and therefore, the leadership rating forms an important part of CEI. The leadership rating also takes into account how confident residents are in the leadership's ability to respond to new sources of unease, whether they are physical accidents and emergencies or social/economic issues.
The safety infrastructure and programs ratings are straightforward; how much infrastructure and how many programs are in place? How aware of them are the residents? Do the residents feel that their cities lack the appropriate infrastructure and programs, or the opposite?
CEI also assesses the prevalence of sources of unease in a given city. The sources may be physical dangers such as traffic accidents and natural disasters, or intangibles such as unemployment and infringement of privacy. CEI will identify the number of sources as well as the most significant sources in order.
