Hudson's Seismic Design Category, explained

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Hudson in Seismic Design Category A: Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. That puts Hudson in the 3th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 3% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

How Hudson compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.022g, short-period spectral response 0.046g, 1-second spectral response 0.03g. Among 157 Wisconsin cities in this dataset, Hudson ranks 145 for seismic hazard, the 8th percentile within the state. About 15,031 people live in Hudson, Wisconsin.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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

Earthquake insurance for a Hudson home

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 Hudson address.

More on how this number was built

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