Western European countries continued their dominance in a global survey of how well nations do handling risks ranging from climate and health to politics.
The 2022 version of the FM Global Resilience Index, which began in 2014 and is conducted by the commercial property insurer, measures 15 categories of risk from how well a country is prepared to handle issues such as climate change, supply chains, cyber attacks and health crises.
Denmark remained the No. 1 country, followed in the top five by Switzerland, Luxembourg, Singapore and Germany. The U.S. was divided into three regions, with Region Three taking the sixth spot.
Region Three is the central U.S., while Region Two is the western part of the country and Region One is the eastern. The country is broken up on account of the wide differences in terms of the susceptibility to climate and seismic risks of the coastal areas.
Haiti fared worst among the 130 countries surveyed, with African and Central American nations also among those with the lowest scores.
This year’s index took notice of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. Political risk saw Russia fall 11 places to 55, while Ukraine remains in the bottom 10% of countries at 75.
It also tracked the risk of a cyber attack, with Ukraine and Georgia – “both targets of large-scale cyber attacks,” reportedly from Russia – seeing their ranking for that measure fall 28 and 47 places, respectively.
“A war-torn Ukraine and a sanctioned Russia are testing the resilience of lower-income countries reliant on imports for food and energy,” the report noted. “Cyber risk, too, has escalated with the conflict, with both actual and threatened attacks.”
Pentti Tofte, staff senior vice president data analytics at FM Global, says many companies use the index as a tool when evaluating where to expand, or site a new plant.
“The resilience index is really a relative index,” he says. “A lot of companies are in the process of establishing an ESG framework,” he adds, referring to environmental, social and governance issues.
The new supply chain timeliness measure, for example, is especially relevant given the much-publicized problems with supply chains during the coronavirus pandemic. All three regions of the U.S., for example, ranked in the top 20 for this measure, with Singapore taking the top spot followed by Denmark, Hong Kong, Finland and the U.K. rounding out the top five.
Luxembourg, Switzerland and Ireland led in the economic category, followed by Denmark and Singapore. All three regions of the U.S. were tied at 6.
