A new quantitative method for risk assessment of geological disasters in underground engineering: Attribute Interval Evaluation Theory (AIET)

• A quantitative method (AIET) is proposed for risk assessment of geological disasters.
• The AIET can make an analysis of the reliability of quantitative evaluation results.
• A practical AIET Software package is developed to perform risk assessment process.
• Engineering applications have been carried out to verify its accuracy and feasibility.

A new quantitative method named Attribute Interval Evaluation Theory (AIET) is proposed for risk assessment of geological disasters in underground engineering in the present study. The AIET not only can quantitatively evaluate and prioritize risks by combining consequences and probability of occurrence, but also can make an analysis of the reliability of evaluation results. The values of evaluation indices are taken as intervals rather than unique values, which is more reasonable because of geotechnical complexity and uncertainty. A simple and practical software package is developed so that the risk assessment process which is subjected to a large number of calculations can be completed automatically in a few seconds. Engineering applications to different geological disasters and results comparison indicate that the AIET can be successful in evaluating and prioritizing risks in most cases. The confidence coefficient value has a big impact on the reliability of evaluation results. The reasonable confidence coefficient value for an evaluation result with a reliability index of no less than 80% is found to be in the range of 0.60–0.63, and its maximum value can reach 0.66 for most of the engineering practices.