Duquesne's Seismic Design Category, explained

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Duquesne in Seismic Design Category B: Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. Rank it against the rest of the country and Duquesne sits at the 22th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

Where Duquesne sits in Pennsylvania

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.042g, short-period spectral response 0.089g, 1-second spectral response 0.045g. Among 193 Pennsylvania cities in this dataset, Duquesne ranks 162 for seismic hazard, the 16th percentile within the state. About 5,074 people live in Duquesne, Pennsylvania.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

Outside California, no state-level retrofit grant equivalent to Brace + Bolt could be found for Pennsylvania. 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 Duquesne address.

More on how this number was built

The methodology guide covers exactly how USGS's public design-maps API produced Duquesne'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.