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When a location has no score

This is the most common question we get, and it has four different answers that look nearly identical on screen. Working out which one you are looking at takes about a minute and changes what you should do.

A location without a score shows no score — never a zero

BaseScore runs from 1 to 100. There is no zero. If a location is not covered, the platform shows no score rather than scoring it 0.

If you see a literal 0, that is not a low score — it is something to report. Do not brief a stakeholder on it as though the location were safe. An absence of data is not an absence of risk, and the difference matters most in exactly the rural and international locations where this comes up.

The four states

State 1 — No score, and the area is not covered

The location sits outside current coverage. This is a true coverage gap and the most common cause.

What to do: see Coverage for how to request it. Include the full address and the business reason — specific requests with a use case attached are what get prioritized.

State 2 — No score, but the radius is too tight

A tightly-set radius can return no score at a location that is covered, because the area enclosed contains too little data to score.

This is the more common cause whenever a site sits inside a city that clearly has coverage.

What to do: widen the radius first. It costs nothing and immediately tells you which state you are in — if a score appears, the location is covered and the radius was the issue. If it does not, treat it as State 1 or 3.

State 3 — No score, just outside a covered boundary

Coverage follows the reporting boundaries of the underlying source data, not a radius drawn around a city. A suburban or outlying site can fall just outside a well-covered metro.

What to do: flag it to your CSM. Boundary-adjacent gaps in an otherwise covered region are the most straightforward expansion requests to act on.

State 4 — Events are listed, but the heat map is blank

You can see incidents in the Events List and the counts are populating, but the heat map shows nothing. This is expected behavior, not a defect, and it comes down to geocoding precision.

Incidents geocode at the precision of the source report:

Granularity Appears in counts and analytics Renders on the heat map
Street level Yes Yes
Intersection Yes Yes
City / district level Yes No

An incident reported only at city level has no specific point to plot, so it contributes to your analytics but cannot be drawn on the map. This is common in international cities where source reporting is less granular.

What to do: check the Granularity column in the events list. If the events are city-level, the blank map is correct and your counts are still valid.

A separate case — a score exists but the map does not draw it

Your saved location shows a BaseScore in the My Locations dashboard, and the API returns a score, but drilling into the map shows nothing rendered.

This is not a coverage gap. The data exists and the score is valid. If you conclude the location is uncovered on the basis of the blank map, you will be wrong.

What to do: trust the dashboard and API values, and report it with the location name and coordinates.

Quick diagnostic

Does a BaseScore show anywhere — dashboard, API, or analytic panel?
│
├─ Yes → Does the map draw it?
│        ├─ Yes → Is the heat map blank despite listed events?
│        │        ├─ Yes → State 4 · check the Granularity column
│        │        └─ No  → Working normally
│        └─ No  → Separate case · report it, the score is valid
│
└─ No  → Does widening the radius produce a score?
         ├─ Yes → State 2 · radius was too tight, not a gap
         └─ No  → Is a nearby city covered?
                  ├─ Yes → State 3 · boundary-adjacent, flag to your CSM
                  └─ No  → State 1 · true gap, request coverage

Why the distinction matters

Getting the diagnosis wrong is expensive in both directions.

Concluding "this location isn't covered" when the data is actually present means abandoning analysis you could have run — and it happens, because a blank map looks identical whether the cause is a coverage gap, a geocoding precision limit, or a rendering issue.

The reverse mistake is worse. Treating a missing score as reassurance means briefing a stakeholder on an absence of data as though it were an absence of risk.

When in doubt, widen the radius, check the Data Source module, and ask. A one-line question is cheaper than either mistake.