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Abstract Urbanization is an important force driving the development of the social, economic, and ecological environments in urban China. As the capital of China, Beijing has experienced a shift in the development process from emphasizing economic development to emphasizing ecological livability in recent decades. During this period, the Olympic Games, real estate development, and environmentally friendly construction policies were major events that affected Beijing's urban ecosystem and its safety. Based on the Pressure–State–Response (P-S-R) framework model, this paper establishes an indicator system for assessing the ecological security of Beijing from 1995 to 2015. The indicators were generated through coupling of an ecological model with time-series multi-source remote sensing data such as night light images and Landsat ETM images. We assessed ecological security during different policy periods and developed an ecological security early warning system for Beijing. After the effects of the economic development policy and the bid for the Olympic Games from 1995 to 2005, the urban area of Beijing with falling ecological security continues to expand. From 2005 to 2010, due to the joint effect of 2008 Olympic venue construction, urban environmental remediation policies, and real estate policies, the overall safety level in the central city was better, but the suburbs showed the opposite trend. In 2010–2015, real estate developed explosively in Beijing, while environmentally friendly development became strongly emphasized and the economic status of the capital weakened. The ecological security of the main urban area began to improve significantly, but the outer urban area and suburban areas were greatly affected by real estate development and exhibited a clear decline in ecological security. Graphical abstract Unlabelled Image Highlights • New remote sensing ecological security evaluation index for highly developed urban. • Ecological security in urban and suburban of Beijing presented different trends. • Ecological security in Beijing was closely related to the policy. • Urban managers should consider ecological security when making policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]