French soldiers guarding a Jewish institution in Paris. Photo: The Blaze.

Paris has a “high” potential for a terrorist attack against civilians and businesses and has seen one of the greatest increases in risk among cities worldwide, a study by Verisk Maplecroft revealed on Wednesday.

“According to Verisk Maplecroft, Paris … has experienced one of the steepest rises in [the company’s] ranking, reflecting the severity of the terrorist attack in January 2015 that left 17 people dead,” said the report, referring to the deadly attacks at satire publication Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in the French capital.

Verisk Maplecroft said the risk in France reflected similar security challenges facing other Western cities, in countries such as Belgium, Canada and Australia, where radicalized Islamic terrorists may target high profile sites for their “significant PR value.”

To compile its results for its Global Alerts Dashboard, the security consulting firm collected data from “1300 of the world’s most important commercial hubs and urban centers.”

Not surprisingly, the Israeli capital of Jerusalem was categorized at “extreme risk,” though it ranked no. 42, after a string of car-ramming attacks against bystanders in the city and surrounding areas over the past several months.

Sixty four cities in total were categorized as “extreme risk.” Six cities in Iraq topped the overall ranking, as over the past five years the capital Baghdad suffered 380 terrorist attacks resulting in 1141 deaths and 3654 wounded, according to the report.

By comparison, 51 Israelis were killed in terrorist attacks in all of Israel over the same period, according to figures compiled by the Jewish Virtual Library.

But while Jerusalem may rank considerably below many other Middle East and regional countries’ capitals, Israel’s economy was more important than Afghanistan, Yemen or Somalia, where risk was greater, according to the report.

“It is the risk posed by terrorism in the primary cities of strategic economies, such as Egypt, Israel, Kenya, Nigeria and Pakistan that has the potential to threaten business and supply chain continuity,” said the report. Cairo ranked 45 and Nairobi, Kenya was 57.

According to a separate study in global terrorism compiled by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, Israel ranked 32, behind the United States, which ranked 22.