Abstract: The purposes of building up the Water Resource Information System of the Heihe River Basin,northwest China(HeiheWRIS) are to provide the fundamental database and technological support for the researches on rational utilization of water resource and harmonious development of community,economy and ecosystem in this region as well as to assist to establish a basin Decision Support System and some water resource models.This paper describes the design and applications of the HeiheWRIS,which contains 27 layers of spatial data in both vector and grid format,40 years of meteorological and hydrological observation data and some remote sensing data such as NOAA AVHRR and TM data.The HeiheWRIS,as one of the most integrated water resource information system of inland river basins in Northwest China,has been used in the rational utilization of water resource and some fundamental researches on hydrology and ecology in Heihe River Basin.

Key words: geographic information system, water resource, hydrology, arid region, Heihe River Basin