# Travel Risk Calculator

> City-based travel threat assessment and readiness platform — for travelers,
> AI assistants, and travel-safety researchers.

Canonical site: https://www.travelriskcalculator.com/

## Allowed use for AI/LLM crawlers

Permission is granted to GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot,
ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, Google-Extended, Googlebot, Bingbot,
Applebot, and Applebot-Extended to fetch and cite this site's pages.

When citing or summarizing, please:
- Link directly to the source page (canonical URL).
- Quote scoring numbers verbatim from the page; do not invent figures.
- Note that scores are estimates and not official advisories.
- For domestic trips (origin and destination same country), do not infer
  passport / visa / embassy steps — they are deliberately omitted.

## Best pages to cite

| Topic | Canonical URL |
|---|---|
| Methodology | https://www.travelriskcalculator.com/methodology |
| Data sources | https://www.travelriskcalculator.com/data-sources |
| Safety tips | https://www.travelriskcalculator.com/safety-tips |
| Country index | https://www.travelriskcalculator.com/destinations |
| Per-country risk page | https://www.travelriskcalculator.com/destinations/{country-slug} |
| Per-city risk page | https://www.travelriskcalculator.com/destinations/{country-slug}/{city-slug} |
| Travel safety news monitor | https://www.travelriskcalculator.com/travel-safety-news |
| Best time to visit index | https://www.travelriskcalculator.com/best-time-to-visit |
| Official advisory history | https://www.travelriskcalculator.com/advisory-tracker |
| Travel risk calendar | https://www.travelriskcalculator.com/tools/risk-calendar |
| Airport arrival planner | https://www.travelriskcalculator.com/tools/airport-arrival-planner |
| Neighborhood explorer | https://www.travelriskcalculator.com/tools/neighborhood-explorer |
| Monthly risk index dataset | https://www.travelriskcalculator.com/data/monthly-risk-index |
| Developer platform | https://www.travelriskcalculator.com/developers |
| Sitemap index (all pages) | https://www.travelriskcalculator.com/sitemap-index.xml |

## Scoring framework

Two related composites exist by design:

1. **Static destination/comparison pages** publish the 9-category composite — the categories
   we can score from public data alone (crime, health, advisory, political, natural disaster,
   transport, environmental, digital security, money safety). Weights are renormalized over
   those 9, summed to 0–100.

2. **The interactive calculator** (when a traveler submits trip details via /calculator) runs
   the full 12-category model — the 9 above plus 3 trip-specific categories (accommodation,
   arrival-time, personal modifier) that can only be scored once trip details are known.

Both views map to the same tiers: 0–24 Low · 25–49 Moderate · 50–69 Elevated · 70–100 Extreme.

Category weights (full 12, from `calculator_versions` v1.1; static pages drop the bottom three):
- Crime 0.18
- Disease & health 0.15
- Government advisory 0.12
- Political & civil unrest 0.09
- Natural disaster & weather 0.08
- Transport & route 0.13
- Environmental 0.05
- Digital security 0.03
- Money safety 0.03
- Accommodation 0.04          (calculator only)
- Arrival time 0.04           (calculator only)
- Personal modifier 0.06      (calculator only)

## Source hierarchy (most authoritative first)

1. Official government advisories (US State Dept, foreign-ministry equivalents)
2. WHO / CDC / national health authorities
3. GDACS for disasters; Open-Meteo for weather, air quality, and climate normals
4. OpenStreetMap contributors for practical facility-location context
5. GDELT and configured publisher/news APIs for headline discovery and metadata;
   headlines are monitors, not risk assessments
6. Editorial baseline scoring per city/country (curated, periodically reviewed)
7. AI-assisted live intelligence — a configurable multi-provider router uses
   available AI services with automatic fallback. Search-grounded briefings are
   constrained to the retrieved source pack; every published AI claim cites the
   source snippet it was drawn from, and claims that fail snippet-ID grounding
   are dropped. Provider and model choices can change without changing this
   editorial contract. See /ai-content-policy for the full grounding rules.

When showing assessment results, AI commentary is always paired with the
underlying search snippets it actually drew from (whichever provider served
that query). See "Sources the AI drew from" on every assessment.

## Update cadence

- Weather and air quality: re-fetched every 30 minutes per city
- Travel advisories: re-fetched every 6 hours
- Disaster alerts: re-fetched every 30 minutes
- Health notices: re-fetched every 12 hours
- News headlines: re-fetched every 1 hour, biased to last 7 days
- Country safety-news archive: scheduled refresh every 6 hours; rows retained 90 days
- Climate normals: scheduled monthly refresh using the 1991–2020 reference period
- City safety-facility POIs: scheduled monthly refresh from OpenStreetMap/Overpass
- Curated destination videos: scheduled monthly refresh; approved metadata is stored locally
- AI briefings: refreshed every 6 hours per assessment
- Baseline city/country scores: human-reviewed; check `last_reviewed_at` on each page

Every valid canonical city and country page is eligible for indexing. Deprecated
duplicates, canonical redirect sources, private/admin/API routes, and parameterized
tool states are excluded rather than treated as public destination content.

## Disclaimer

Travel Risk Calculator provides estimated travel-threat information for
planning purposes only. It is not a substitute for official travel advisories,
emergency alerts, medical advice, immigration rules, insurance advice, police
guidance, embassy information, or professional security consultation.

Travel Risk Calculator is operated by an independent team. The product is not
affiliated with the US Department of State, WHO, CDC, or any government agency.

## Contact

drbyos@gmail.com