Advances and challenges in assessing submarine landslide risks to marine infrastructure

Submarine landslides, as a significant marine geological phenomenon, pose substantial risks to underwater construction projects such as offshore oil and gas exploitation, submarine pipelines and cables, offshore wind power installations, and even coastal engineering. However, existing reviews on submarine landslides primarily focus on summarizing their triggering mechanisms and flow characteristics from the perspective of the landslides themselves, while rarely addressing their impact on ocean engineering applications, which lacks practical significance. Therefore, following an in-depth analysis of the fundamental characteristics, mechanisms of occurrence, and relevant influencing factors of submarine landslides, this study provides an in-depth exploration into the potential impact of submarine landslides on marine infrastructure through illustrative examples of past submarine landslide incidents. Additionally, it proposes risk assessment methodologies as well as monitoring and mitigation strategies for related projects. The key findings from our research are as follows: (1) There is an urgent need to establish a unified classification standard for types of submarine landslides instead of continuously refining their categorization; (2) The primary distinction between marine engineering and land-based engineering lies in the complex marine dynamic environment that necessitates considerations such as geological conditions, environmental factors, and structural design; (3) Current measures to prevent submarine landslide disasters in marine engineering primarily focus on avoiding hazardous areas during the design and exploration stages, with limited emphasis on post-landslide disaster prevention and mitigation measures; (4) Existing field investigation techniques for studying submarine landslides predominantly concentrate on basic research aimed at identifying already existing occurrences but lack industrial applicability due to being mostly experimental single-object monitoring approaches; (5) Numerical models used to simulate submarine landslides often oversimplify the phenomenon's complexity hindering practical project applications. Henceforth, it is crucial to consider macro–micro interconnected effects when simulating the evolution of underwater landslide movements.