Submarine landslides have attracted widespread attention, with the continuous development of ocean engineering. Due to the recent developments of in-situ investigation and modelling techniques of submarine landslides, significant improvements were achieved in the evolution studies on submarine landslides. The general characteristics of typical submarine landslides in the world are analyzed. Based on this, three stages of submarine landslide disaster evolution are proposed, namely, the submarine slope instability evolution stage, the large deformation landslide movement stage, and the stage of submarine landslide deposition. Given these three stages, the evolution process of submarine landslide disaster is revealed from the perspectives of in-situ investigation techniques, physical simulation, and numerical simulation methods, respectively. For long-term investigation of submarine landslides, an in-situ monitoring system with long-term service and multi-parameter collaborative observation deserves to be developed. The mechanism of submarine landslide evolution and the early warning factors need to be further studied by physical modelling experiments. The whole process of the numerical simulation of submarine landslides, from seabed instability to large deformation sliding to the impact on marine structures, and economizing the computational costs of models by advanced techniques such as parallel processing and GPU-accelerators, are the key development directions in numerical simulation. The current research deficiencies and future development directions in the subject of submarine landslides are proposed to provide a useful reference for the prediction and early warning of submarine landslide disasters.

Mastering the strain transfer mechanism in distributed fiber optic (DFO) sensors holds the key to analyzing strain measurement errors from DFO sensing systems. However, the impact of the monitored structure’s strain distribution on the strain transfer mechanism in DFO sensors has often been overlooked in the existing research. To address this issue, a strain transfer model of surface-bonded DFO sensors with multilayered structures was established based on the shear lag theory. The closed-form solutions of the strain transfer coefficient of DFO sensors subjected to uniform, parabolic, single-linear gradient, and bilinear gradient strains were obtained. With a high-accuracy optical frequency-domain reflectometer (OFDR), the theoretical model was validated by laboratory tests. Upon parametric analysis, suggestions were further offered about designing and installing DFO sensors.

The hardening soil model with small-strain stiffness (HSS model), capturing nonlinear stiffness of soils at small strains, offers advantages for deformation analysis of tunnels or deep excavations in soft clay areas such as Hangzhou City. However, its complex parameters are rarely determinable via conventional tests, and regional geological differences render parameter determination methods of other areas inapplicable to Hangzhou. To address this issue, this paper summarizes the geological genesis, spatial distribution, and physical–mechanical properties of Hangzhou soft clays, and clarifies significance and acquisition of HSS model parameters. Via statistical analysis of existing literature data, the relationships between key HSS model parameters and physical indices (e.g., void ratio) were established. A 3D finite element (FE) simulation of a Hangzhou excavation validated the proposed parameter determination method: simulated lateral retaining structure displacement and surface settlement closely matched field measurements. The simulation results employing the model parameters proposed herein are closer to the measurements than those based on the method of Shanghai, providing guidance for excavation design and geotechnical parameter selection in Hangzhou soft soil region.