Risk Score Methodology

How we rate country safety, where the data comes from, what we don’t do, and how to read a score in the context of your own trip.

What the score means

Every country in the dashboard carries a 0–100 risk score and a four-level rating (Low / Moderate / High / Very High). The score is an editorial composite — not a statistical model — built from six categories that map to the kinds of risk a traveller actually faces on the ground.

Treat it as a starting point, not a verdict. A 25 in France and a 25 in Costa Rica reflect very different threat profiles; the category breakdown below the headline number is where the useful detail lives.

The six categories

Each category gets a 1–5 score. The categories and their weights in the headline number are:

Category	What it covers	Weight
Crime	Violent crime, theft, scams, kidnapping risk for tourists	20%
Terrorism	Terror threat level, recent attacks, regions to avoid	20%
Natural disasters	Earthquakes, cyclones, floods, volcanic, wildfire risk	15%
Health	Disease prevalence, water safety, healthcare quality, evacuation needs	15%
Civil unrest	Protests, political instability, ethnic or sectarian tensions	15%
Infrastructure	Road safety, transport reliability, communications, utilities	15%

How to read a category score

Where the data comes from

Country profiles are built from a mix of authoritative public sources and Warnely’s own incident data. We don’t scrape blindly — an editor reads each source and synthesises the picture for travellers.

Review cadence

The dataset carries a top-level last-reviewed date and a data version, both visible on every country profile. We re-audit the entire dataset on a rolling cadence and flag conflict zones for higher-frequency review.

• Stable / low-risk countries — reviewed at least every 6 months.
• Moderate / high-risk countries — reviewed at least every 3 months.
• Active conflict zones — show a banner directing users to the live FCDO advisory rather than relying on our static text. Reviewed monthly or on major-event triggers.

Live data alongside the score

The static score answers “what is this country usually like?”. The Warnely Wire panel and live alerts answer “what is happening there right now?”. Both are designed to be read together — the score gives you a baseline, the Wire tells you whether anything has shifted in the last 48 hours.

How the live signal is computed

Every time you load a country, the dashboard pulls the last 30 days of safety incidents from the Warnely incident pipeline and runs the same scoring functions used in our backend:

• Crime / natural-disasters / terrorism / infrastructure: 0 incidents → 1, 1–2 → 2, 3–5 → 3, 6–10 → 4, more than 10 → 5.
• Civil unrest uses a higher band because protest reporting is noisier: 0–1 → 1, 2–5 → 2, 6–15 → 3, 16–30 → 4, more than 30 → 5.
• Terrorism uses a 90-day window (rare events shouldn’t flip rapidly); other categories use 30 days.
• The six category scores are weighted (Crime 25, Nat. Disasters 20, Health 15, Terrorism 15, Civil Unrest 15, Infrastructure 10) and rolled up to 0–100. That number is the live score shown next to the static one.

If the live score exceeds the static rating by 8+ points and there are at least 3 real incidents in the last 30 days, an “Elevated short-term signal” banner appears above the breakdown to flag that the country is currently noisier than its baseline.

Per-category bars get a small live +N tag when the 30-day signal lifts that category above its static score — so you can see which type of risk is driving the elevation, not just the overall number.

Currency rates are live too

Exchange rates are pulled from a public exchange-rate feed on page load and cached in your browser for 12 hours. The displayed rate updates without us shipping a new dataset version — you’ll see “just now” or “~Xh ago” next to the rate so you know how fresh it is.

Personas — reweighting the score for who you are

The default 0–100 score answers “what is the average traveller’s risk profile here?”. The dashboard’s View as selector reweights the same six category scores for who you actually are — a solo female traveller, a family with children, a business traveller, a backpacker, or an LGBTQ+ traveller. The category data doesn’t change; only the rollup does.

The persona-weighted score is shown alongside the default one with a ±N vs default delta so you can see how much your read on the country shifts. Examples:

• Solo female: weight Crime up to 30%, Civil Unrest up to 20%, drop Terrorism and Natural Disasters — cultural climate and street safety dominate.
• Family with children: weight Health up to 25%, Infrastructure up to 20% — vaccinations, transport reliability, and tap-water status matter more.
• Business: weight Infrastructure up to 25%, Civil Unrest and Terrorism each to 20% — what gets your meeting cancelled.
• Backpacker: weight Health up to 25%, Natural Disasters up to 20% — rural exposure and limited evacuation options.
• LGBTQ+: weight Crime up to 25%, Civil Unrest up to 25% as a proxy for legal climate. We don’t yet ship structured legal-status data per country — the persona note directs you to Equaldex and your government’s LGBTQ+ travel advice for the laws.

The persona is persisted in the URL (?persona=soloFemale) so you can share a link with the right read already applied.

Visa & entry

Every country profile carries a structured visa block: type (six categories), length, cost, official application URL where applicable, and a paragraph note covering recent changes. Six visa types, colour-coded:

• Visa-free — no advance application; passport stamp on entry.
• Schengen visa-free — 90 days within any 180 across the entire Schengen Area. ETIAS authorisation (\u20ac20) becomes mandatory in late 2025 for visa-exempt non-EU visitors (UK/US/Canada/Australia, etc.).
• Visa on arrival — pay at border on arrival; have cash and passport photos ready.
• eVisa (apply online) — full electronic visa application before travel; approval can take days.
• Electronic Travel Authorisation — lighter pre-travel registration (ESTA, ETA, NZeTA, K-ETA). Cheaper and faster than full eVisa but still required.
• Visa required (embassy) — in-person or postal application at a consulate before travel; weeks-to-months processing.

Critical caveat: this data assumes a Western traveller (UK, US, EU, Canada, Australia, NZ passport). Other passports face very different requirements — sometimes more permissive (e.g. Indian/Chinese passports get free 30-day visa-free entry to Mongolia and Iran where Western passports need eVisas), often more restrictive. For any non-Western passport, the official answer is the IATA Travel Centre — every visa block links there directly.

Recent changes flagged in the data:

• UK ETA mandatory for US/Canada/Australia/NZ from January 2025; EU/EEA from April 2025.
• Schengen ETIAS launching late 2025 (\u20ac20, valid 3 years).
• Romania and Bulgaria became full Schengen members in March 2024 (air/sea) and January 2025 (land).
• Brazil re-introduced eVisa for US/Canada/Australia in April 2025 after 2019\u20132023 visa-free experiment.
• Thailand extended visa-free stay from 30 to 60 days in July 2024.
• Vietnam extended eVisa to 90 days from August 2023.
• Kenya replaced eVisa with eTA for ALL nationalities in January 2024 ($30, 90 days).
• China introduced 30-day visa-free trial for select EU/Pacific countries 2024+; 240-hour transit visa-free at major cities.
• Mongolia now visa-free 30 days for most Western from 2024.
• South Korea waived K-ETA for many nationalities 2024-2026 — check before applying.
• Israel ETA-IL rolling out early 2026 for visa-exempt nationalities.
• Saint Kitts and Nevis decriminalisation (2022), Antigua (2022), Barbados (2022), Dominica (2024) — all reflected in the LGBTQ section.
• Iraq introduced VOA at Baghdad/Erbil airports for ~30 Western nationalities since 2021.

Always re-verify within a week of booking. Visa policy changes faster than any other safety data — new requirements, fee changes, and document validity rules can shift on weeks-not-years cadence. The note on each block highlights what changed recently; the IATA link gives you the authoritative current answer.

Currency & tipping

Every country profile carries a daily-budget block (backpacker / midrange / luxury) in local currency with USD equivalents, and a structured tipping note covering restaurants, taxis, and hotel staff specifically — not just a generic “10% at restaurants.”

Two principles guided the fill-in:

• Honest about conflict zones. Countries with active war, failed-state context, or government-against-tourism advisories get “Tourism not viable” or “See official advisory” rather than fabricated budget numbers. Sudan, South Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Libya all carry this honest label.
• Country-specific tipping context. “10% at restaurants” isn’t actionable — the question travellers actually ask is “do I tip the taxi driver, the hotel housekeeper, the safari guide, and how much in local currency?” Every entry now answers all three.

Specific cultural notes the tipping block calls out:

• Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand, Iceland, Netherlands: tipping is not customary and can confuse or even insult locals. Service is included; rounding up for excellent service is the most you should do.
• Polynesia and Melanesia (Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea): tipping is culturally inappropriate; resort staff are tipped via a communal “tronc” box at end of stay.
• Russia, Belarus, Iran, Lebanon, Venezuela: sanctions / hyperinflation reality means foreign cards may not work. Carry cash; small USD bills are widely welcome where available.
• Bhutan: a $100/day Sustainable Development Fee is mandatory for all tourists, separate from accommodation and food. Effective minimum daily spend is $250+.
• Turkmenistan: independent tourism is barely possible — almost everyone travels with a state-licensed guide whose tip is built into the package.

Numbers are 2026 estimates from World Bank GNI data, Numbeo cost-of-living, and traveller-forum consensus. Budget figures shift quickly with currency volatility — verify in the week before booking, especially for Argentina, Venezuela, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, and Sri Lanka where parallel exchange rates can dramatically change effective costs.

Drug laws

Drug law mistakes by tourists are a leading cause of foreign-citizen prosecutions, and the consequences can include the death penalty. Every country profile carries a structured drug-law block with three signals: severity tier, cannabis-specific status, and a paragraph traveller note covering the things that actually catch travellers out.

Six severity tiers, colour-coded:

• Death penalty possible — capital punishment on the books for trafficking and (in some countries) possession. Includes Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, UAE, Brunei, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, North Africa MENA states.
• Severe (long sentences) — 10+ years possible for personal possession; harsh enforcement.
• Strict — significant prison time (3–10 years) for possession.
• Moderate — possession often fines or short jail; varies by amount and substance.
• Personal use decriminalised — small-quantity possession is administrative, not criminal. Trafficking still illegal.
• Cannabis legal (limited) — recreational cannabis legal under specific frameworks (Germany, Malta, Luxembourg, Uruguay, Canada, parts of US/Australia, South Africa private use).

The cannabis status is broken out separately because it’s the most common traveller-relevant question and the legal landscape has shifted dramatically in the last five years — what was illegal a year ago may be legal now and vice versa (Thailand legalised in 2022 then re-restricted in 2024).

Specific traveller traps the notes call out:

• Japan bans Adderall, Vyvanse, dextroamphetamine, and modafinil at customs even with a US/UK prescription. ADHD travellers need a Yakkan Shoumei import certificate (or alternative meds prescribed locally).
• UAE operates trace-residue arrests — a luggage swab finding microgrammes of cannabis or cocaine has resulted in 4-year sentences. Many controlled prescription meds (codeine, melatonin, common psychiatric drugs) require Ministry of Health pre-approval.
• Singapore has mandatory urine tests at the border for travellers from certain origins, and the death-penalty thresholds are very low (cannabis >500g, heroin >15g).
• Iran executes more people for drug offences than any country except China — hundreds annually.

Sources: UK FCDO drug warnings per country, US State Department travel advisories, Harm Reduction International’s annual death-penalty-for-drugs report. Always cross-check the FCDO page (linked from each block) before travel — drug laws change faster than most other safety data.

Essential phrases

Each country profile carries five essential phrases in the local language: hello, thank you, yes / no, sorry, and help! — with the native script and an approximate Latin phonetic. The capitalised letter in each phonetic shows the stressed syllable.

We deliberately ship phrases for 26 languages we can verify (Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Greek, Turkish, Russian, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Croatian, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian/Malay, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, Hebrew). Multilingual countries (Switzerland, Belgium, South Africa, Singapore, Canada) are skipped on the principle that the wrong primary-language pick is worse than no pick at all — English in those countries gets you reliably understood.

Arabic uses Modern Standard Arabic, which is broadly understood across the Arabic-speaking world but is not the colloquial dialect anywhere — Egyptian, Levantine, Maghrebi, and Gulf Arabic each have their own local forms. The MSA phrases here will be understood and read as polite/formal. Hindi is shipped for India even though India has 22 scheduled languages — it’s the most widely usable single choice but not universal, especially in southern states where English is often a more reliable option.

Phrases are double-checked against multiple sources (Lonely Planet language guides, Omniglot, the relevant Wikipedia language pages). If you see a wrong romanisation or a script error, email us — phonetic conventions vary and we erred toward the most common English-traveller convention.

Audit log

Spot-check fixes applied across releases after re-verification passes:

• Papua New Guinea drive side: corrected from right-hand to left-hand. PNG was Australian-administered and drives on the left, matching Australia, NZ, Fiji, Solomon Islands.
• Saint Kitts and Nevis LGBTQ status: corrected from “criminalised” to “legal, no recognition.” The colonial-era buggery law was struck down by the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court (Justice Trevor Ward) in August 2022 — we missed this initially.
• Bulgaria LGBTQ note: corrected the framing of the constitutional ban. Bulgaria’s 1991 Constitution already defines marriage as man-woman; recurring legislative pushes have tried to add stricter bans but the original constitutional text long predates those.
• Trinidad & Tobago LGBTQ status: revised from “legal” to “contested.” The 2018 High Court ruling that struck down the buggery law was reversed by the Court of Appeal in 2025; further appeal expected. Note now directs travellers to verify on Equaldex before travel.
• Czech Republic LGBTQ note: updated to reflect the 2024 partnership-rights expansion (joint adoption, shared surnames). Still short of full marriage equality but materially broader than the 2006 baseline.

Found something else wrong? hello@warnely.com — corrections from travellers always welcome.

Women’s safety

Every country profile carries a structured Women’s Safety rating with a one-paragraph traveller note. Five tiers, colour-coded:

• Very Safe — very low harassment and violent crime; solo female travel is normalised.
• Generally Safe — some hassle (catcalling, pickpocketing, drink-spiking in nightlife) but no major safety risk.
• Caution — notable harassment, scams, or cultural friction. Standard female-traveller precautions apply (modest dress where relevant, ride-hail at night, no unattended drinks).
• Higher Risk — documented assault risk, severe sexism, or persistent dangerous patterns. Group travel or tour with a guide is materially safer than solo.
• Extreme Caution — active conflict, severe legal restrictions, or societal collapse. Most government advisories will recommend against travel.

Notes are deliberately specific — what kind of hassle, where, and what reduces it — rather than generic “exercise caution.” The rating reflects current consensus from women-traveller communities, government advisories, and published assault statistics; we err on the harsher side when sources disagree. If a country has updated its profile in COUNTRIES with country-specific text, we use that; otherwise the structured fallback fills in. Either way, every country has a tier and a paragraph.

LGBTQ+ legal status & social climate

Every country profile carries a structured LGBTQ+ Travellers block with three signals: legal status, social climate, and a one-paragraph traveller note covering PDA, scene visibility, dating-app risk, and any recent enforcement trends. Six legal-status tiers:

• Marriage equality — same-sex marriage legally recognised.
• Civil unions / partnerships — legally recognised partnerships short of full marriage.
• Legal, no recognition — same-sex relations are legal but no partnership rights.
• Legal but actively hostile — technically legal but with anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, “propaganda” laws, or pattern-of-prosecution under public-decency / morality codes.
• Criminalised — same-sex relations carry imprisonment.
• Death penalty / severe penalty — capital punishment or comparable severity (long imprisonment + corporal punishment) on the books, even if rarely enforced.

Five social-climate tiers (progressive · accepting · mixed · conservative · hostile) capture lived experience separately from the legal status — a country can be legally permissive but socially conservative, or vice versa. We grade conservatively: when in doubt, the country gets the harsher rating.

Always verify on Equaldex. LGBTQ+ law changes faster than most other safety data — new criminalisation bills, court rulings, and enforcement shifts happen on weeks-not-years cadence. Every block links directly to the country’s Equaldex page so you can check current status and recent enforcement before booking. The persona-weighted score for LGBTQ+ travellers boosts Crime and Civil Unrest as a proxy until this data is integrated into the live signal.

Country deep-dive pages

Every country in the dashboard also has a long-form landing page at /guides/is-<country>-safe — useful when you want a single page to read or share rather than the interactive dashboard. The pages are generated from the same dataset, so the headline score, breakdown, advisories, and Quick Facts always match. Twelve countries (Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam) have additional hand-written prose; the rest are template-driven.

Quick facts

Every country profile carries a Quick Facts card — plug type, mains voltage, timezone, driving side, and tap-water safety. These are the things travellers check repeatedly and the answers don’t need long-form prose. The card lives in the right-hand panel of the dashboard.

Tap-water classifications are conservative: safe means generally drinkable from public taps in most cities; caution means it varies by region or treatment status — locals often drink it but a sensitive traveller may want bottled or filtered; unsafe means stick to bottled or properly treated water. When in doubt, default to bottled — the cost of being wrong about water is very high.

What we don’t claim

• It’s not a guarantee. A “Low Risk” rating does not mean nothing bad can happen; risk is everywhere.
• It’s not personalised. A solo female traveller, a business traveller, and a backpacker face different risks in the same country. The category breakdown plus the dedicated solo / women’s safety sections are what to read for that.
• It’s not real-time on its own. The static score lags — the Wire panel does not. Read both.
• It’s not a substitute for the official advisory. Always check your home government’s travel advice before booking and again before departure. We link to it on every page.

Corrections and feedback

If a country profile is wrong, missing critical context, or out of date, tell us — we’d rather hear it from you than learn about it from a traveller’s bad day. Email hello@warnely.com with the country and the line you’d change.

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