Abstract:
Geohazards in China are characterized by a large number of potential hazard sites, wide spatial distribution, complex triggering conditions, significant cascading amplification effects, and substantial challenges for emergency response. Against the background of increasingly frequent extreme rainfall events associated with climate change, persistent strong earthquake activity, and growing disturbances from major engineering projects, risks associated with individual geohazards, including landslides, collapses, debris flows, ground collapse, ground fissures, and land subsidence, remain prominent, while multi-hazard coupling, cascading hazard transmission, and systemic risk amplification have become increasingly evident. Meanwhile, rapid advances in satellite remote sensing, InSAR, unmanned aerial vehicles, BeiDou/GNSS, distributed fiber-optic sensing, microseismic monitoring, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, digital twins, and large language models provide a new technological foundation for transforming geohazard prevention and control from experience-based judgment, site-specific management, and post-disaster response toward data-driven analysis, mechanism-constrained modeling, dynamic early warning, intelligent emergency response, and integrated risk governance. Taking the development of the Geohazards Research Center of the National Institute of Natural Hazards, Ministry of Emergency Management of China, as an example, this paper analyzes the scientific and technological demands, disciplinary organization logic, and evolution of technical systems for the prevention and control of geohazards and their compound and cascading risks in the new era. An integrated scientific and technological support framework is proposed, comprising a data platform, mechanism understanding, risk assessment, monitoring and early warning, scenario simulation, emergency decision-making, and policies and standards. The results suggest that, to strengthen the prevention and control of major individual geohazards and compound and cascading risks, the Geohazards Research Center should be developed into a mission-driven, data-supported, mechanism-innovation-oriented, technology-integrated, and emergency-response-ready research organization. Priority should be given to breakthroughs in multi-source geohazard data governance, mechanisms of individual geohazards and cascading processes, physics–data fusion models for hazard prediction and risk assessment, integrated space–air–ground–borehole intelligent monitoring and early warning, and digital-twin-based emergency scenario simulation. These efforts will promote an integrated development framework encompassing scientific research, operational support, public service, and talent cultivation, thereby providing sustained scientific and technological support for enhancing China’s comprehensive geohazard prevention and control capabilities and modernizing emergency management.