It is generally known that the wavelet decomposition requires specific wavelet basis functions and decomposition layers. Meanwhile there exit some problems in the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) such as false modes. To avoid the disadvantages above, this paper presents a method of structural damage detection and location based on the ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) and fast independent componentan analysis (FastICA) algorithm to accurately extract the structural damage novelty information. At first，the measured structural dynamic responses are preprocessed by EEMD，and then the FastICA algorithm is used to extract the feature components involving the damage information so as to detect the structural response anomalies and preliminary locate damage. After that, the maximum number of the normalized source distribution vector (NSDV) is computed to accurately locate the structural damage. To prove the validity of proposed method, a frame numerical example and a laboratory test are conducted, the results show that the proposed algorithm can successfully detect the instant and location of damage.