Abstract: Urban geological environment is a core factor in evaluating underground space utilization as it directly affects the utilization difficulty and determines the overall safety and economy of underground project. The underground space utilization in Wuhan city is affected by many factors inclusive of landform, rock and soil condition, hydrology, geological structure and seismic effect, as well as adverse geology and geological disasters. In this article, the suitability of geological environment in the utilization of shallow (0-15m) underground space in the main urban area of Wuhan city is evaluated. An index system is constructed according to a large number of drilling data and other engineering geological data. On this basis, an improved model for suitability evaluation is built based on optimizing evaluation scales and group judgment matrix, and then the evaluation result is obtained through secondary development with MAPGIS platform. Results show that the geological environment in the study area has overall a good suitability for underground space utilization, and poor suitability regions are mainly concentrated in Hankou, Wuchang, and Qingshan closed to the alluvial plains of the Changjiang River and the Hanjiang River. The evaluation results could also offer guidance and reference to the overall planning of underground space utilization of Wuhan.

Key words: main urban area of Wuhan, underground space, utilization and development, geological environment, suitability evaluation, improved analytic hierarchy process