Tall building frames that respond to large seismic ground motions tend to have significant spatial variability of damage over their height, often with a concentration of that damage in the lower stories. In spite of this spatial variability of damage, existing damage and loss models tend to focus on taking the maximum story drift and then assuming the same drift applies over the entire height, damage is then calculated for the building--clearly a conservative approach. A new loss analysis approach is thus recommended that incorporates the effects of spatial distribution of earthquake induced damage to frame buildings. Moreover, the approach aims to discriminate between required repair and replacement damages. Suites of earthquakes and incremental dynamic analysis along with the commercial software SAP2000 are used to establish demands from which story damage and financial losses are computed directly and aggregated for the entire structure. Rigorous and simplified methods are developed that account for spatial distribution of different damage levels arising from individual story drifts.
