Disaster prevention stepped up

Facing increasingly severe geological disaster threats, China will accelerate a shift in risk management from individual hazard points to entire risk zones while advancing precise and intelligent prevention to minimize casualties and property losses, according to a new five-year plan released by the Ministry of Natural Resources.

The implementation plan for national geological disaster prevention and control during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30) comes as extreme rainfall increasingly triggers sudden, clustered and cascading disasters in areas outside traditional high-risk zones, exposing the limitations of point-based prevention.

Despite significant progress in recent years, China's geological disaster prevention and control situation remains severe. By the end of 2025, nearly 280,000 geological disaster hazard points had been registered nationwide, threatening 11.48 million people and property worth more than 760 billion yuan ($112.54 billion), according to the ministry.

During the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), deaths from geological disasters fell by 52 percent and direct economic losses dropped by 38 percent compared with the previous five-year period. The country also made significant advances in disaster prevention technology by deploying more than 75,000 automated monitoring and early warning devices and piloting comprehensive remote-sensing identification of geological disasters.

However, China's diverse terrain, complex geological conditions and active tectonic and seismic activity, combined with varied climate types, frequent extreme weather and intensive engineering activities, make geological disasters frequent and recurrent, said Yang Xudong, a senior engineer at the ministry's geological disaster technical guidance center.

Geological disasters are also difficult to predict because of their concealed nature, tendency to recur and sudden onset, Yang said, adding that prevention remains the key to reducing disaster risks.

Yang said China's geological disaster prevention has entered a third stage.

"The previous two stages — whether relying on traditional community-based monitoring and professional surveys or on large-scale, high-precision remote sensing and widespread monitoring instruments — focused on hazard points with visible deformation signs," Yang said.

"The new stage directly addresses mass shallow landslides and debris flows triggered by extreme rainfall, which often show no warning signs and typically occur during the heaviest rainfall. Traditional methods have difficulty identifying and predicting such disasters," he said.

To address the new challenges, the plan outlines seven major tasks for the next five years, including dynamic surveys, monitoring upgrades and comprehensive governance. It calls for more than 4,200 engineering treatment projects, over 6,100 hazard elimination projects and the relocation of 50,000 households.

Dual management of both hazard points and risk zones will be implemented in 1,206 key counties, cities and districts across 17 priority provinces, with management lists and accountability systems established for each area.

The plan also designates 21 key prevention zones, up from 16 during the 14th Five-Year Plan period. The zones cover about 2.97 million square kilometers for landslides, rockfalls, debris flows and ground subsidence, as well as 280,000 sq km for ground settlement and earth fissures.

Newly designated prevention zones include the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo River hydropower project area, high-altitude long-distance disaster chain regions and the Yanshan-Taihang Mountain region. The plan also further refines traditional high-susceptibility areas, including the southeastern hilly regions and the southwestern mountainous regions.

The plan emphasizes improving the precision and intelligence of geological disaster prevention. It calls for detailed surveys at a 1:10,000 scale in key towns located in extremely high-and high-risk areas and promotes the application of technologies such as artificial intelligence and digital twins to improve hazard identification and early warning.

"These changes represent a major upgrade in prevention thinking," Yang said. "The shift reflects the scientific recognition that under extreme conditions, some disasters remain beyond prevention with existing technology."

He said future disaster prevention will rely more on scientific risk assessment, precise early warning and broad public participation to enhance disaster prevention awareness across society.