United States

United States location information schemes.

  • FIPS State County
  • FIPS State County ZIP 5
  • FIPS State County ZIP 9

Required information

These location information schemes require the following information:

  • The FIPS State County location information scheme requires the country name, abbreviation, or code, as well as a valid two-character state code or state name in the Area field and a valid one- to three-digit county code or county name in the Subarea field.
  • The FIPS State County ZIP 5 scheme requires the country name, abbreviation, or code, as well as a valid state name or code in the Area field, a valid county name or code in the Subarea field, and a valid five-digit ZIP code in the Postal field.
  • The FIPS State County ZIP 9 scheme requires the country name, abbreviation, or code, as well as a valid state name or code in the Area field, a valid county name or code in the Subarea field, and a valid nine-digit ZIP code in the Postal field.
Note:

You can import an exposure data file for the United States that contains a mixture of five- and nine-digit ZIP codes.

When you import a nine-digit ZIP code, you can include a dash in this ZIP code.

Applicable geocode match levels

Verisk Synergy Studio matches these sets of information at the following levels:

  • At a County centroid geocode match level if you supply the country, state, and county (FIPS State County location information scheme)
  • At a population-weighted Postal Code centroid geocode match level if you supply the country, state, county, and five-digit ZIP code (FIPS State County ZIP 5 location information scheme)
  • At a Relaxed Address geocode match level if you supply the country, state, county, and nine-digit ZIP code (FIPS State County ZIP 9 location information scheme)
Note:

If you enter location data for the United States at a FIPS State County (subarea) level, Verisk Synergy Studio forward fills the location information that you enter to include the corresponding ZIP 5 (postal) code to meet model requirements.

If you supply just country and state (area) data for exposures in the United States, Verisk Synergy Studio imports these locations but does not geocode them. You can then use these imported locations for geospatial analysis accumulation purposes only.

Verisk Synergy Studio supports United States State FIPS codes in the State (area) field in import files. If you supply a valid FIPS code in the Area field, Verisk Synergy Studio accepts this FIPS code and converts this code to the corresponding United States Postal Service State code (NY, MA, etc.) during the import process. Verisk recommends using the United States Postal Service State code whenever possible in the Area field in import files.

Resolution levels

The following table compares the resolution levels of the location information schemes for the United States:

Table 1. United States location information scheme resolution levels
Resolution level Location information scheme
Maximum – when street information is available on United States exposures Street-level address data
Maximum – when street information is not available, but only ZIP9s are available ZIP 9
ZIP 5
Minimum County
Note:

For geocoding United States locations, if the exposure data that you supply includes a street address and city/state/ZIP code data, then the Verisk Synergy Studio geocoding mechanism first attempts to determine an interpolated address (exact/relaxed) or street-level geocode.

If the street geocoding data cannot be found or is not available in the input record, then Verisk Synergy Studio falls back to the lower resolution geocodes listed in United States location information scheme resolution levels. The processing always attempts to provide the highest resolution possible, given what is available in the input address data, the quality of the input address data, and the available Verisk Synergy Studio geocoding data.