Importance of specifying codes

While your location data may include both location names and location codes, Verisk recommends specifying location codes whenever possible.

Using codes to specify exposure locations is usually much less error-prone than entering the corresponding location names. Further, Verisk uses location codes, rather than location names, as the primary values for maintaining and manipulating area data.

Slight variations in location names in your exposure data can result in discrepancies in geocoding. In addition, location names are often not unique, and location names change more frequently in the source data over time than the corresponding location codes. Finally, multiple instances of a location name in your exposure data may include differences in special characters, spacing, and abbreviations that make these names less reliable for matching with values in the VeriskGeography database.