The report puts the average long-term value of building losses from earthquakes at $4.5 billion per year, with roughly 80 percent of losses attributed to California, Oregon and Washington.

"This analysis of data from the new National Seismic Hazard Maps reveals that significantly more Americans are exposed to earthquake shaking, reflecting both the movement of the population to higher risk areas on the west coast and a change in hazard assessments," said co-author Bill Leith, senior science advisor at USGS. By comparison, FEMA estimated in 1994 that 75 million Americans in 39 states were at risk from earthquakes.

Kishor Jaiswal, a research contractor with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), presented the research conducted with colleagues from USGS, FEMA and California Geological Survey. They analyzed the 2014 National Seismic Hazard Maps and the latest data on infrastructure and population from LandScan, a product of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.