Abstract:  China is one of the countries in the world suffering from serious debris flow disasters. The debris flow disaster not only happens frequently, but also causes heavy casualty and property loss. The disaster, meanwhile, is very difficult to prevent and monitor. This study collected data of all debris flow disasters occurred in China from 2005 to 2015, and analyzed the times, places, scales, losses and causes of these debris flow disasters. The following characteristics can be concluded: there was a clear downward trend in debris flow occurrence in recent years; the debris flow disasters were mainly distributed in the western and southeastern coastal provinces; and large or megascale debris flow disasters suffered heavy losses. Through the analysis of specific cases, the main reasons for the serious damage caused by debris flow were found to be the following: inadequate monitoring and early warning systems; improper placement of urban construction sites in the mountainous areas; low standards for disaster prevention and control; poor earthquake disaster management; and weak public awareness of disaster prevention. At the same time, China is actively responding to the threat of debris flow by enhancing the prevention and control standards in earthquake prone regions, inventing a number of new flow blocking technologies, developing monitoring and warning systems with realtime visualization capabilities for better efficiency, increasing the public awareness of disaster prevention, and vigorously developing the mass monitor networks and disaster prevention and warning systems. There is also a paradigm change in the debris flow disaster management strategy involving integrating disaster prevention and control into urbanization planning.

Key words: debris flow, temporal and spatial distribution, cause, prevention and control countermeasures