Does Bowling Green, OH need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Bowling Green in Seismic Design Category B: Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. Nationally, Bowling Green ranks above 48% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 48th percentile.

Bowling Green by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.073g, short-period spectral response 0.138g, 1-second spectral response 0.056g. Among 254 Ohio cities in this dataset, Bowling Green ranks 76 for seismic hazard, the 70th percentile within the state. About 30,463 people live in Bowling Green, Ohio.

Retrofit economics for Bowling Green

Outside California, no state-level retrofit grant equivalent to Brace + Bolt could be found for Ohio. A typical retrofit still runs $5,000-$10,000 nationally, about $7,000 for a common single-family job.

Insuring against this, not just retrofitting

Outside California, earthquake coverage is typically sold as an endorsement added to a standard homeowners policy, not a separate product - worth asking about directly when getting a home-insurance quote for a Bowling Green address.

More on how this number was built

The methodology guide covers exactly how USGS's public design-maps API produced Bowling Green's numbers. The guide to what a Seismic Design Category actually means covers why a category is never a substitute for an engineer's assessment of one specific house.