In the process of engineering-geological surveys, specialists daily face difficulties in the interpretation of the existing normative-technical documents, inconsistencies between various standards or the insufficiency of the requirements stated in them. The paper considers these problems and provides some proposals for updating the regulatory base aimed at solving them.

It is not earthquakes themselves that often lead to the destruction of buildings and structures, but their secondary effects such as tsunamis, flooding, seismogenic displacements along faults, soil liquefaction, landslides (including collapses), avalanches, etc. It is well known that in the design and construction of buildings and structures in seismically hazardous land areas, it is necessary to assess the hazards of such seismogenic processes and phenomena. This paper provides a brief overview of the problem of taking into account the secondary consequences of earthquakes in detailed seismic zoning and microzoning of land and water areas in regulatory and methodological documents. Particular attention is paid to assessing the seismic hazards of water areas, including to the need for more detailed studies of the still poorly studied eruption dynamics of marine mud volcanoes and for revealing the relationship between the eruption dynamics and earthquakes.

An analytical review of studies on the influence of the composition and concentration of aqueous solutions of various salts on the seepage properties of clay soils is presented. It is shown that, depending on the mineral type of clays, mineralization and composition of filterable aqueous solutions of salts and absorbed cations, the permeability and filtration coefficients of clays can vary several times or even by several decimal orders, which must be taken into account when constructing protective dams with clay cores, sludge reservoirs, and tailing dumps.