The method of damage identification in soil-wall system was studied; a new approach based on improved multi-population genetic algorithm (IMGA) was developed. First, the simplified dynamic-detection model of soil-wall system was established, meanwhile, the theoretical analysis of characteristic equations in soil-wall system was conducted when soil in damage status. The objective function based on characteristic equations was established. Then, the improvements of multi-population genetic algorithm, including the adoption of real-valued representation, adaptive cross operator and adaptive mutation operator, were conducted. Finally, the localization and quantification of the soil-wall system damage were performed by IMGA with and without the consideration of noise, respectively. The results indicate that damage location and damage extent can be detected efficiently, and anti-noise performance is better.