Miami, FL: what USGS's seismic model says

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Miami in Seismic Design Category A: Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. That puts Miami in the 1th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 1% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

Where Miami sits in Florida

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.019g, short-period spectral response 0.04g, 1-second spectral response 0.02g. Among 228 Florida cities in this dataset, Miami ranks 199 for seismic hazard, the 13th percentile within the state. About 487,014 people live in Miami, Florida.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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 address.

More on how this number was built

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