Geographic information systems (GIS) are a widely used tool in urban planning and management. More and morecities and decision-makers require its attributes of promptness, precision and visualiz ation. But the application of GIS in urbanenvironmental management is still a new field and relevant researches are getting on tardily. As a subsystem of GIS, an urbanenvironmental management geographic information system (UEMGIS) should be a complex multi-discipline and multi-objectivetool to perform quantitative multi-dimension analysis and to transfer the results into an expression legible to an ordinary user. Itshould be a dynamic system of prompt functions based on upgradable databases, and be composed of many subsystemsrespectively specialized in items about water, air, waste and noise as well as relative standards and regulations. However,existing UEMGISs mostly rely on the basic GIS too much to design the actual requirements of applications and managements inthemselves, and the unavailability of sufficient fundamental data has retarded their improvement. In the design of a UEMGIS, thestandardization of data classification should be taken into consideration to make the data exchangeable and shareable among itssubsystems and within every subsystem, and the applicable error limits for input data should be defined in accordance with theuser's required precision of data out. Data acquisition can be easy and quick if remote sensing, global positioning system (GPS)and other technologies are combined with GIS. Rapidly progressing information technologies have been giving a bright prospectfor the melioration of UEMGIS that will have great potential and wide application in environmental conservation.