Abstract: Under the threat of terrorism attacks and military strikes, building columns of the perimeter frames are likely to suffer near-field near-ground explosion. To rapidly assess the dynamic responses and failure modes of the building columns under such blast scenarios, in this paper numerical simulation method is employed to investigate the distribution pattern of the shock waves on the front face of building columns under near-field near-ground blast scenarios, and a corresponding simplified blast load model is proposed. To this end, firstly, the existing experimental data of overpressure and impulse are selected to validate the numerical model for blast load. Then, a typical numerical model under near-field near-ground blast scenarios is established to study the effects of the scaled distance and scaled height of the spherical charges on the characteristic values of the shock waves acting at the building columns. Finally, formulae for the maximum reflected impulse and the representative value of the positive overpressure duration are derived based on regression analysis, and the blast load at each location of the column front face is represented by an equivalent triangular load model. The results indicate that when the scaled height of the charge is less than 0.3 m/kg1/3, the distribution of the maximum reflected impulse along the column length can be represented as a trilinear model and a bilinear model for the scaled distance of 0.4 m/kg1/3-0.6 m/kg1/3 and 0.6 m/kg1/3-1.4 m/kg1/3, respectively. Moreover, under a given scaled distance and a scaled height, with increasing the charge weight, the peak reflected overpressure remains constant but the maximum reflected impulse is proportional to the cubic root of the charge weight at the locations with the identical scaled height of the column.