When exploiting Jurassic-era coal resources in Northwest China, there are risks of water inrush and sand burst disasters from coal seam roofs. To improve the safety of coal mining, it is imperative to accurately and objectively evaluate the water inrush risk of sandstone aquifers from coal seam roofs and to reasonably and effectively prevent and control water disasters. In this paper, the 221 mining area of the Shilawusu Coal Mine was considered. By combining the basic geological condition data, hydrogeological condition data, and drilling data in the area studied, four main control factors, including the equivalent thickness of sandstone, the lithology coefficient of sandstone, the interbedded coefficient of sand and mud, and the core recovery rate, were selected as evaluation indexes for predicting the water inrush risk from the coal seam roof. A hierarchical prediction and discrimination model of water inrush risk based on combination weighting-set pair analysis was established. The combination weighting method, which is based on the sum of squared deviations, was used to optimize the subjective and objective weight values obtained by the improved analytic hierarchy process and entropy weight methods. By applying set pair analysis theory, the comprehensive connection degree was determined using the set pair connection degree function that was constructed with 31 instances of drilling data in the study area. Then, the risk grade of each drilling data instance was evaluated by the confidence criterion of set pair analysis to calculate the water inrush risk evaluation index. Finally, the obtained index was combined with the borehole pumping test data and the discharging test data to partition the water inrush risk from the coal seam roof. The results indicated that most of the 221 mining area is safe, and the small transitional and dangerous areas are only in the central and northern regions. Based on the combination weighting-set pair analysis method, the water inrush risk from the coal seam roofs in the study area was accurately and objectively classified by a discrimination model.

With the expansion of coal mining westward in China, water inrush from seam roofs has become a prominent safety problem during mining. The roof rock of the coal seam in the Shilawusu coal mine has the characteristics of a double-layer structure, and the overlying separation space formed in the mining process of the coal seam poses a risk of water inrush. To ensure the safety of coal mine production, considering the geological and hydrogeological data of the mining area, the core recovery rate, lithologic assemblage index, key aquifer thickness, hydrostatic head and lithologic structure index of the Zhidan Formation are selected as evaluation indexes. The index weights are calculated based on the attribute hierarchical model and coefficient of variation methods, and subjective and objective preference coefficients are introduced to determine the ranking of comprehensive indexes. The catastrophe progression method is improved, and a zoning prediction model for water inrush risk is established by the improved catastrophe progression method. The results show that only a tiny part of the mining area is in danger, and most areas are in the safe and transition zones. The model realizes the prediction of the risk of water inrush from the overlying separation layer in the study area and provides a theoretical basis for the prevention and control of water inrush from the overlying separation layer in coal mining.