Ocean City's Seismic Design Category, explained

USGS's ASCE 7-16 seismic design model - the same standard building codes use - places Ocean City in Seismic Design Category A: Lowest seismic design category. Building code requires no seismic-specific detailing here beyond ordinary construction practice. Nationally, Ocean City ranks above 14% of the 4,875 cities in this dataset for seismic hazard - the 14th percentile.

Ocean City by the numbers

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.042g, short-period spectral response 0.088g, 1-second spectral response 0.036g. Among 46 Maryland cities in this dataset, Ocean City ranks 45 for seismic hazard, the 2th percentile within the state. About 6,884 people live in Ocean City, Maryland.

What a retrofit costs in Ocean City

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

Earthquake insurance for a Ocean City 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 Ocean City address.

More on how this number was built

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