Despite significant progress made recently on simplifying the loss estimation procedures, they are not easy to use in engineering design practice. One of the reasons for this is insufficient information regarding the inevitable variations in the type and density of structural and non-structural components present in various building usages. This study aims to establish building usage groups with similar proportions of structural and non-structural components and compute the corresponding weighting factors. The methodology adopted in this study can be used in other regions; however, herein concluded values and building usage groups are based on New Zealand–specific information. The method involves extracting component construction/installation costs from construction handbooks for a range of different building usages, assembling components into three performance groups (structural, drift-sensitive non-structural, and acceleration-sensitive non-structural), then grouping the building types based on similar structural and non-structural component costs. Four different building usage groups are identified, and probabilistic distribution parameters of the performance group weighting factors for each group are proposed. A case study demonstrating the application of these weighting factors in seismic loss estimation is provided.

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