A Unified Conceptual Framework for Gravitational Instabilities: From Latent System State to Failure
Gravitational instabilities are among the most widespread natural hazards and are expected to become increasingly significant under ongoing environmental change. Despite substantial advances in process understanding, monitoring, and modeling, predicting the timing of failure remains a fundamental challenge because instability emerges from complex interactions operating across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Existing approaches often focus on specific processes, forcing mechanisms, or observational signatures, resulting in a fragmented view of how systems evolve toward failure. This article propose a unified conceptual framework in which gravitational instabilities are interpreted as the progressive evolution of a latent system state controlled by damage accumulation, stress redistribution and external forcing to catastrophic failure. Within this perspective, failure emerges from the continuous interplay between internal system dynamics and external forcing, while predictability depends on our ability to infer the evolving state of the system from incomplete and indirect observations. The framework provides a common structure linking physical processes, observable manifestations, monitoring strategies, modeling approaches, and forecasting methods across a wide range of gravitational hazards. By integrating concepts from geomechanics, fracture mechanics, statistical physics, and data-driven sciences, the proposed framework shifts the focus from the search for universal precursors toward the reconstruction of evolving system states and their proximity to instability. It offers a unifying perspective for understanding failure processes and developing more robust approaches to hazard assessment and early warning.