Life-safety disparity index: a comprehensive, valid, and reliable tool to assess Chinese people’s life-safety performance

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new index to assess life-safety performance across Chinese provinces, providing a tool for policymakers and researchers.

Contribution

The paper presents the world's first comprehensive life-safety disparity index (LDI) with a validated conceptual framework.

Findings

The LDI includes 65 third-grade indicators and identifies five life-safety zones across 31 Chinese provinces.

The highest LDI score was 100.00, while the lowest was 54.75, showing a 1.83-fold disparity.

The DEA-CP model was used to determine indicator weights and calculate scores.

Abstract

In order to accurately and quantitatively grasp the current situation and trend of Chinese people’s life-safety performance and to provide scientific basis and suggestions for the government, scientific research institutions, enterprises and the public to do a good job in life-safety protection.

The establishment process of life-safety disparity index (LDI) included six steps, including (i) concept building (ii) framework formulation; (iii) indicator selection; (iv) database building; (v) weight determination; and (vi) LDI scores calculation. The indicator scheme for LDI based on this framework was constructed after multiple rounds of panel discussions with our expert advisory committee. We adopted the Data envelopment analysis-Compromise planning (DEA-CP) model to determine the weights for each indicator and calculate score.

The weighted indicator scheme of LDI comprised 6 first-grade indicators, 21 s-grade indicators, and 65 third-grade indicators. According to the pilot analysis based on the data from 31 provinces of China mainland, the maximum value of LDI was 100.00, the minimum value was 54.75, and the maximum value was 1.83 times the minimum value. According to the score, China mainland was divided into 5 life-safety guarantee zones, including high security zone, medium to high security zone, medium security zone, low to medium security zone, and low security zone.

LDI, which has been strictly verified, would represent the world’s first assessment tool that builds a conceptual framework from the overall perspective of ensuring life-safety.

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