New York's Seismic Design Category, explained

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places New York 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 New York sits at the 64th percentile for seismic hazard among 4,875 US cities.

How New York compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.173g, short-period spectral response 0.282g, 1-second spectral response 0.059g. Among 170 New York cities in this dataset, New York ranks 40 for seismic hazard, the 77th percentile within the state. About 8,478,072 people live in New York, New York.

Retrofit economics for New York

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

More on how this number was built

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