Low Damage Seismic Design (LDSD) guidance material being developed by Engineering NZ is considering
a design drift limit for multi-storey buildings of 0.5% at a new damage control limit state (DCLS). The
impact of this new design requirement on the expected annual loss due to repair costs is investigated for a
four-storey office building with reinforced concrete walls located in Christchurch. The LDSD guidance
material aims to reduce the expected annual loss of complying buildings to below 0.1% of building
replacement cost. The research tested this expectation. Losses were estimated in accordance with FEMA P58, using building responses from non-linear time history analyses (performed with OpenSees using lumped
plasticity models). The equivalent static method, in line with NZS 1170.5 and NZS 3101, was used to design
the building to LDSD specifications, representing a future state-of-practice design. The building designed to
low-damage specification returned an expected annual loss of 0.10%, and the building designed
conventionally returned an expected annual loss of 0.13%. Limitations with the NZS 3101 method for
determining wall stiffness were identified, and a different method acknowledging the relationship between
strength and stiffness was used to redesign the building. Along with improving this design assumption, the
study finds that LDSD design criteria could be an effective way of limiting damage and losses