Does Katy, TX need an earthquake retrofit?

Katy carries Seismic Design Category A under USGS's ASCE 7-16 model. Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. Nationally, Katy ranks above 12% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 12th percentile.

How Katy compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.032g, short-period spectral response 0.066g, 1-second spectral response 0.038g. Among 384 Texas cities in this dataset, Katy ranks 241 for seismic hazard, the 37th percentile within the state. About 27,741 people live in Katy, Texas.

Retrofit economics for Katy

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

What this means for insurance

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 Katy address.

More on how this number was built

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