This paper discusses the fundamentals of categorization of building sites based on the behaviors and conditions of foundation soils correlated with earthquake disasters of foundation in geotechnical investigation design

suggests revising the foundation embedment and the depth of overburden and the behavior of foundation soil according to the current "Code for Seismic Design of Buildings" （GB 50011-2001） of China

and emphasizes the necessity and possibility of further categorization of building sites using seismic response analysis of soil layers at the site. The paper has also analyzed the influence of the foundation embedment and the depth of overburden on building site categorization respectively with 2 typical project sites in Beijing

and then applied the seismic response analysis of soil layers （the input waves are taken as artificial seismic waves with different exceeding probabilities） to obtain the response spectrum on ground surface and 23m-depth subsurface

calculated the degree of influence on the result of soil layer response taking account or no account of clay and soil interlayer

and finally integrated the comparisons between peak acceleration and the maximum acceleration response spectrum values to revise the building site categorization.