Stuart's Seismic Design Category, explained

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

How Stuart compares

The raw figures: peak ground acceleration 0.022g, short-period spectral response 0.048g, 1-second spectral response 0.026g. Among 228 Florida cities in this dataset, Stuart ranks 151 for seismic hazard, the 34th percentile within the state. About 19,566 people live in Stuart, Florida.

Retrofit economics for Stuart

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 Stuart address.

More on how this number was built

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