Northwood's Seismic Design Category, explained

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Northwood in Seismic Design Category B: Low seismic hazard. Code requires basic seismic detailing (bracing, connections) but no special structural system restrictions. That puts Northwood in the 44th percentile nationally for seismic hazard - higher than 44% of the 4,875 US cities USGS was checked against here.

How Northwood compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.069g, short-period spectral response 0.132g, 1-second spectral response 0.053g. Among 254 Ohio cities in this dataset, Northwood ranks 148 for seismic hazard, the 42th percentile within the state. About 5,222 people live in Northwood, Ohio.

Bracing and bolting: the actual cost

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

Earthquake insurance for a Northwood 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 Northwood address.

More on how this number was built

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