There are a large number of long deep-buried tunnels either being designed and under construction in Western China. The mechanisms of rockburst hazards and their monitoring and early warning in those deep-buried tunnels are particularly important. Microseismic (MS) monitoring

as a spatial monitoring technology for microcrack initiation and propagation

plays a vital role in predicting and warning rockburst in underground caverns. However

the application of evolution of MS source parameters to assess rockburst hazards has not been efficiently applied in practical projects due to the problems of discreteness (spatial)

fluctuation (temporal) and deviation of measured MS data. To improve and solve these problems properly

this paper establishes an EMS method to evaluate and predict rockburst hazards

based on three commonly used source parameters (i.e.

seismic energy

the seismic moment and apparent stress) which can be easily obtained and closely interrelated. This method fully defines the concepts of evaluation parameters

such as seismic energy

seismic moment and apparent stress

and thus the relationship among these three parameters can be obtained. Then

these three parameters are applied to predict rockburst and to evaluate the grade of potential rockburst. Meanwhile

the method defines concepts of MS path and the space of MS source parameters. Finally

the EMS method is adopted to analyse a rockburst case in the Micangshan tunnel of Bazhong-Shaanxi highway

Southwestern China. The progressive fractures and rockburst accompanied by MS events are detected and analysed

which achieves an efficient way for daily analyses of MS data and rockburst prediction.