Tunnel construction disturbs groundwater systems, threatening water resource sustainability and ecological stability, while insufficient drainage can pose serious safety risks. Balancing safety with groundwater protection is therefore a critical challenge. Using the Huafu and Huayan tunnels as case studies, this research integrates field observations with MODFLOW simulations to develop a resilience indicator system. The system incorporates stability, recovery capacity, and critical thresholds to quantify groundwater responses to construction disturbances. A mechanism for detecting groundwater anomalies during tunneling is also proposed. Results show that extreme disturbances cause sharp declines in system performance, but subsequent recovery and resilience gains reflect self-organizing and self-healing properties of groundwater systems. This study demonstrates a resilience-based framework for evaluating tunnel impacts on groundwater. The findings provide early warning insights for water-related hazards and guidance for groundwater protection and restoration in tunnel engineering.
Xiong et al. (Thu,) studied this question.