To match the requirements of managing achievements of electronic waterway maps for surveying center of the Yangtze River waterway, this paper analyzes properties in material management. Based on this, the author put forwards an approach to the design of the electronic waterway maps management system, and describes it from the system’s logical structure, functional structure and data structure respectively, which verifies the reasonability of the system design. This system has achieved good results and satisfies the demand from the survey centre to the waterway map’s management.