Abstract: Early warning of rock mass failure has always been an important research subject of mining disaster prevention. To improve the accuracy and reliability of early warning on rock mass failure, a comprehensive early warning method is proposed in this paper based on the Cusp catastrophe theory and D-S fusion evidence theory.Firstly, two independent early warning criteria were obtained by establishing the Cusp catastrophe analysis model and the D-S fusion evidence model. The following step was to form a comprehensive early warning criterion with two former criteria on the basis of risk matrix. Finally, the warning effect of the three warning methods mentioned above was tested by actual microseism data in the mine.The results show that:the cusp catastrophe model is less effective for early warning of rock mass failure and the D-S fusion evidence model is less robust, while the comprehensive early warning model has a higher accuracy and a better robustness.The accuracy and reliability of the early warning for rock mass failure is significantly improved.