Water inrush disasters in mining frequently occur under the influence of confined water‐bearing fault zones. Therefore, investigating the fault water inrush mechanism is necessary to reduce the number of occurrences of this type of disaster. In fault zones, the rock is highly fractured, and the mechanism of water conduction is complex. In this research, the seepage mechanism of fractured sandstone in fault zones is studied through experiments, and the results indicate that the permeability coefficient of fractured sandstone depends on the axial stress and particle size. The relationship between the permeability coefficient and axial stress was an exponential relationship. Then, a water‐rock coupled model is proposed based on the experimental results, which considers the different water flow patterns during water inrush disasters. Finally, a numerical simulation combined with the water‐rock coupled model is conducted to investigate the fault water inrush mechanism of a case study, and the results reveal that when water inrush disasters occur during mining, two types of conditions are required. One is that the connection among the fractured zone of the coal seam roof, fault fracture zone, and aquifer fails, and the other is that the connection among the fractured zone of the water inrush prevention pillar, fault fracture zone, and aquifer fails. This study contributes to an increased understanding of the mechanism of water inrush disasters and the design of water inrush prevention pillars.

Risk assessment is critical for the construction of the subway station to improve the risk management and reduce the additional loss. According to field investigation of safe construction, the analytical network process (ANP), fuzzy set theory and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation (FCE), a fuzzy ANP comprehensive evaluation (FANPCE) model was proposed to evaluate the risk of subway station construction in this paper. Twelve key risk factors of subway station construction were identified through literature review and questionnaires. The interdependency among risk factors were illustrated through the network structure of ANP, and then a weight matrix of single risk factors was built by comments and survey results, and the interdependent weight matrix was quantified by integrating the triangular fuzzy number into the ANP. Subsequently, the total risk rank of assessed projects can be quantified though the synthesis of weight matrices with the synthetic operator of FCE. Wu Lu Kou subway station was selected as a case study. The results imply that, construction experience, underground water, and safety consciousness have a substantial influence on construction projects and that the total construction risk of Wu Lu Kou subway station is ranked at I level. Moreover, the loss analysis of the whole construction process verifies this method. This research contributes to developing a FANPCE method to identify the risk factors with high weights, assess the risk rank of projects and appropriately respond to the results. In addition, the developed fuzzy set theory-ANP-FCE integrated network provides stakeholders a consolidated model for the risk evaluation.