🌍 USGS Seismic Risk Profiler

🚀 Assess earthquake risk and seismic hazards for any US location in seconds. Enter latitude/longitude and get recent earthquake activity, risk levels, and geological hazards from official USGS data. Built on the official USGS API - no scraping, no breakage.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-07-07 · 📊 9 fields per location risk assessment · 🌎 Official USGS data · 📍 Live earthquake data · 🔓 No auth required

🎁 Try it free: the free Apify plan returns up to 10 results per run — enough to see the output quality. Any paid Apify plan unlocks full-size runs.

The USGS Seismic Risk Profiler analyzes earthquake history and geological hazards for any location in the continental US. Enter any latitude/longitude coordinates and the Actor queries the official USGS Earthquake Hazards Program API, returning recent seismic activity, calculated risk levels, and magnitude data.

Results are flat JSON rows ready for CSV, Excel, or direct API consumption - built for real estate professionals, insurance underwriters, infrastructure planners, and AI agents evaluating location risk automatically.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Real estate investors, insurance underwriters, infrastructure planners, civil engineers, disaster risk analysts, AI location-intelligence agents	Property risk assessment, real estate due diligence, insurance underwriting, infrastructure planning, geohazard analysis

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📋 What USGS Seismic Risk Profiler does

One input, one run, a clean dataset:

• 📊 Live earthquake data. Pulls recent seismic activity within your chosen radius (10-500 km).
• 📍 Distance calculations. Computes exact distance from your target location to each earthquake.
• ⚠️ Risk classification. Automatic risk level (HIGH/MODERATE/LOW) based on magnitude and proximity.
• 📈 Historical depth & magnitude. Depth in km, moment magnitude, and felt-report counts per event.

💡 Why it matters: Most properties never get assessed for earthquake risk until after a loss. Real-time risk data sourced directly from USGS means you can evaluate any location's seismic exposure in minutes instead of waiting for expensive geological surveys.

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🎬 Full demo

🚧 Video walkthrough coming soon — the Quick Start below takes under 3 minutes end to end.

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
latitude	number	40.7128	Latitude of the location to assess.
longitude	number	-74.0060	Longitude of the location.
radiusKm	integer	100	Search radius in kilometers (10-500). Optional.
daysBack	integer	30	Historical range in days (1-365). Optional.

Example: assess a property in New York

{
  "latitude": 40.7128,
  "longitude": -74.0060,
  "radiusKm": 100,
  "daysBack": 30
}

Example: quick scan of a Bay Area location

{
  "latitude": 37.7749,
  "longitude": -122.4194,
  "radiusKm": 50
}

⚠️ Good to know: USGS data is updated in real-time as earthquakes occur. Risk assessments are based on recent activity; for long-term seismic hazard mapping, combine with USGS National Seismic Hazard Maps.

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📊 Output

Each location risk assessment returns 9 fields. Download as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML, or consume via the Apify API.

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
📍 location	string	"40.7128, -74.006"
📊 magnitude	number	3.2
🌍 depth_km	number	8.0
🎯 distance_km	number	4.0
📝 place	string	"12 km NE of Manhattan, New York"
⏰ time_utc	number	1688000000000
⚠️ risk_level	string	"LOW"
🔬 magType	string	"md"
👁️ felt_reports	integer	45

📦 Sample record

{
  "location": "40.7128, -74.006",
  "magnitude": 3.2,
  "depth_km": 8.0,
  "distance_km": 4.0,
  "place": "12 km NE of Manhattan, New York",
  "time_utc": 1688000000000,
  "risk_level": "LOW",
  "magType": "md",
  "felt_reports": 45
}

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
🌎	Official USGS data. Not third-party aggregation or stale databases - live from the US Geological Survey.
📍	Precise distance calculations. Knows how far each earthquake was from your target location, not just the radius.
⚠️	Risk-level classification. Automatic scoring (HIGH/MODERATE/LOW) based on magnitude + proximity - no expert interpretation needed.
⚡	Built on the official USGS Earthquake Hazards Program API. Stable and durable — no breakage from page redesigns.
🔁	Automatic retries. Transient failures retry with backoff; errors are logged clearly, never silent.
💳	Pay per result. No subscription. A typical run costs $0.015 (typical run with 3-5 earthquakes).

📊 Over 20,000 earthquakes happen annually in the US. Real-time risk data from USGS means you assess property seismic exposure in minutes instead of weeks.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Setup
⭐ USGS Seismic Risk Profiler (this Actor)	$5 free credit, then pay-per-use	Continental US and territories with USGS seismic monitoring	Live per run	⚡ 2 min
USGS Hazard Map (web)	Free	Static zoning map only	Historical	🐢 Manual lookup per property
Commercial seismic services	$50-500/report	Detailed report, property-level	1-7 days	🏢 Slow turnaround
Manual copy-paste	Free	Current session only	One-shot	🐢 Hours of clicking

Pick this Actor when you want you want real-time earthquake risk data on demand - per location, instant.

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🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free Apify account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Go to the USGS Seismic Risk Profiler page on the Apify Store.
3. ✏️ Set your input. Enter latitude and longitude of the location you want to assess — or just press Start, the prefilled example works.
4. 🚀 Run it. Watch results stream into the Dataset tab.
5. 📥 Download. Grab results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML — or pipe them anywhere via the Apify API.

⏱️ Total time from signup to downloaded dataset: 3–5 minutes. No coding required.

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💼 Business use cases

• 🏘️ Real estate investors - assess seismic risk before acquiring property; due diligence on portfolios; price adjustments based on risk data.
• 🏢 Insurance underwriters - rate premiums on earthquake exposure; flag high-risk zones for manual review.
• 🏗️ Infrastructure planners - identify seismic zones for critical infrastructure; design resilience into new projects.
• 🤖 AI location intelligence - agent calls the Actor via MCP, evaluates candidate properties automatically, scores by risk.

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

Data like this powers more than commercial workflows:

• 🎓 Research & academia — empirical datasets for papers and coursework; longitudinal studies across scheduled snapshots; reproducible, citable data pulls.
• 🎨 Personal & creative — side projects, dashboards, visualizations; content research for bloggers, YouTubers, and podcasters.
• 🤝 Non-profit & civic — transparency reporting, advocacy backed by public-interest data, community databases.
• 🧪 Experimentation — prototype AI/ML pipelines on real data; validate product hypotheses before engineering spend.

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🔌 Automating USGS Seismic Risk Profiler

Control this Actor programmatically for scheduled runs and pipelines:

Node.js (apify-client on NPM):

const { ApifyClient } = require('apify-client');
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('saint_person/usgs-seismic-risk-profiler').call({
  "latitude": 40.7128,
  "longitude": -74.0060,
  "radiusKm": 100,
  "daysBack": 30
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

Python (apify-client on PyPI):

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient('YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN')
run = client.actor('saint_person/usgs-seismic-risk-profiler').call(run_input={
  "latitude": 40.7128,
  "longitude": -74.0060,
  "radiusKm": 100,
  "daysBack": 30
})
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items

📚 Full Apify API documentation

Apify Schedules triggers this Actor on any cron interval — hourly for fresh monitoring, daily for feeds, weekly for historical datasets.

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🧠 Use via MCP (for AI agents)

USGS Seismic Risk Profiler is directly callable by any MCP-compatible AI agent (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and others) through Apify's hosted MCP server — no custom integration code needed.

Add this to your MCP client config (e.g. Claude Desktop's claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/sse?actors=saint_person/usgs-seismic-risk-profiler",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" }
    }
  }
}

Once connected, just ask your agent something like: "Use the USGS Seismic Risk Profiler Actor to pull location risk assessment data for my target and summarize it." The agent reads the input schema automatically and calls the Actor directly — no manual dataset download step.

📚 Apify MCP server docs

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🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this Actor

Open a ready-to-send prompt in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🧩 How does it work?

Enter latitude/longitude, click Start. The Actor queries the official USGS Earthquake Hazards Program API, retrieves recent seismic activity within your radius, calculates distance from your location, and returns risk classifications plus magnitude data.

🔐 Do I need a USGS account or API key?

No - the Actor works out of the box. USGS Earthquake API is public and requires no authentication.

⚠️ How is risk level calculated?

Risk is scored by earthquake magnitude + distance from your target location. Magnitude > 5 = HIGH; 4-5 = MODERATE; < 4 = LOW. Earthquakes > 50 km away default to LOW regardless of magnitude.

🌍 Does this work outside the continental US?

The USGS Earthquake Hazards API covers the US and territories. For global earthquake data, use USGS's comprehensive GeoJSON endpoints.

⏰ Can I schedule regular runs?

Yes. Use Apify Schedules to run this Actor on any cron interval (hourly, daily, weekly).

⚖️ Is this data legal to collect?

This Actor only collects data that is publicly accessible through the official USGS Earthquake Hazards Program API, a public service. No login, no bypass of access controls. You are responsible for complying with the source's Terms of Service and any regulations that apply to your use.

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan?

No. The free Apify plan is enough for testing and small runs. Paid plans unlock larger runs, scheduling, and higher concurrency.

🔁 What happens if a run fails?

Transient errors retry automatically with backoff. If a run still fails, the log explains exactly why, and partial results are preserved — you never lose progress.

🆘 What if I need help?

Open an issue on this Actor's Issues tab — reliability is the whole point, and issues get fixed with priority. You can also request custom features or entirely new Actors there.

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🔌 Integrate with any app

USGS Seismic Risk Profiler connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Zapier — connect with 5,000+ apps
• Make — automate multi-step workflows
• n8n — self-hosted automation
• Google Sheets — export datasets to a shared sheet
• Slack — run notifications in your channels
• Gmail — email results automatically after each run
• Webhooks — trigger downstream pipelines
• MCP — let AI agents call this Actor directly

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🧩 Works even better together

Pair this Actor with your property analysis or insurance pipeline: run the seismic assessment here, then feed risk scores into pricing models or underwriting automation. (Backfill with companion Actors once available.)

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🔗 Recommended Actors

• (Coming soon: additional risk assessment actors and location-intelligence tools.)

💡 Pro tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more tools like this.

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🆘 Help & custom requests

• 🐛 Something not working? Open an issue on this Actor's Issues tab — reliability is the whole point, and issues are fixed with priority.
• 🛠️ Need a custom feature, a different data source, or an entirely new Actor built for you? Open an issue describing what you need — custom builds are available.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by USGS - U.S. Geological Survey. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available data is collected.