Does Miami Beach, FL need an earthquake retrofit?

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Miami Beach in Seismic Design Category A: Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. Nationally, Miami Beach ranks above 0% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 0th percentile.

Miami Beach by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.018g, short-period spectral response 0.04g, 1-second spectral response 0.02g. Among 228 Florida cities in this dataset, Miami Beach ranks 220 for seismic hazard, the 4th percentile within the state. About 83,251 people live in Miami Beach, Florida.

Retrofit economics for Miami Beach

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

More on how this number was built

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