STATE OF ART: REGIONAL CRUSTAL STABILITY

This paper reviews the development of research in regional crust stability and evaluates existing theories for regional stability assessment. The authors emphasize that regional stability assessment should be conducted by incorporating them with engineering projects, which translates the site assessment, site utilization into geological engineering design. The development of theories for regional stability assessment should be established on the basis of the advanced frontiers of earth science, such as Dynamics of Lithosphere and Dynamics of Continental Plate. As for methodology, geological disasters and their impacts on engineering structures should be characterized by coupling analysis of endogenic and exogenic geological processes. As a result, it is anticipated that the system analysis and quantitative assessment of regional crust stability can be achieved by establishing a unified dynamics model of geological disasters.