In China, there have been frequent landslide disasters. China has one of the highest risks for landslide disasters in Asia and worldwide. As a result of mining, there are about 7000 open-pit mines, 12,000 tailings reservoirs, and hundreds of thousands of mine waste dumps. Most artificial slopes are located in residential are asorcultivated areas. When a disaster occurs, there is serious threat to the safety of production and nearby living. Recently, the incidence of disasters like landslides, debris flows, and dam breaks of tailings reservoirs have become more frequent, and have resulted in significant losses. For example, August 1, 2008, in Loufan county, Shanxi Province, there was a significant landslide at a waste dump of the Taiyuan Iron and Steel Group at the Jianshan iron mine, resulting in the death of 45 people. There were significant social impacts of this disaster.Many studies have investigated mechanisms of slope instability and disaster prediction. Mechanisms may be complex, and the failure mode under different geological and mining methods, the instability mechanism, and the mechanism of slope instability are incompletely understood. Specifically, the theory and method of slope break time prediction, the definition of dangerous areas, and damage degree division are not clear. Overall, there is insufficient understanding for effective and direct guidance of production to precent these catastrophes. For an earth-rock aggregate slope, rainfall or water are the main causes of displacement and failure. Therefore, current research efforts are focused on understanding the relationship between external incentives and displacement mechanical responses, to evaluate stability and predict landslide events to prevent and control disasters. CITATION:Qin, H, Ma, H and Yu, Z, 2019. Establishment of an early warning model for mine waste dump failure induced by rainfall, in Proceedings 9th International Conference on Sustainable Development in the Minerals Industry, pp 118120 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).