Abstract：The application of geographic information system (GIS) technology to geotechnical engineering in Yangtze river basin is studied. GIS technology has been put into use in the field of landslide analysis，soil and water conservation，and levee construction monitoring. GIS is a set of systems which can be used to gather，manage，and analyze spatial data and the related attribute properties. GIS have two remarkable features as follows：(1) it can manage data and literal information like traditional database data base management system (DBMS)，and it can manage the spatial graphic data；and (2) the complicated spatial data can be analyzed by synthesis method with various of spatial analysis modules in the GIS software platform. Consequently，the interdependence of the spatial items has been established. The analyses of nature phenomena and process in some specific geographic areas are gained，and certain spatial relationship has been proposed，which enables researchers to employ a new synthetical method to solve various problems in geographic field. Presently，GIS technology is introduced in many fields and engineering in Yangtze river basin such as geotechnics，environmental science，water resources planning，river and forestry conservation and so on. With the development of remote measurement technology，it is possible to build on basic spatial geodata database on large scale. By implementing data conversion，data mosaic，overlap processing，GIS can carry out mass data processing and convey the useful information by fiber-optic transmission system. As a result，any special map which will be used in the engineering can be extracted，classified and combined on the computer aided software platform of professional geographic information system.
