Abstract: Spatial data is an important foundation for the work of river chief system. Establishing a reasonable river networks relationship is the core issue of geographic information technology for river chief system. Oriented to the needs of basic information management on the river chief system, the paper expounds profoundly the organizational structure and interrelationships of the river networks. Secondly, a new method of establishing river networks relationship is proposed. The relationship between the branches of the river, the hierarchical relationship of the river section, the downstream relationship on the river network and the subordinate relationship of water objects is analyzed. Finally, the structured expression, iterative construction, physical storage and representation of river networks relationship is discussed. And it briefly introduces the application of this river network relationship in the construction of the basic information platform of river chief system in Sichuan Province.

Key words: river network relationship, river chief system, spatial data, river code, visualization