Abstract: In order to promote water resources big data and its applications in water resources management, it is necessary to conduct a review of the researches in this field and recommend future research directions. This paper firstly introduces the background and development of water resources big data and explains its concept and connotation. Based on these, the research framework of water resources big data has been developed, and meanwhile data storage and sharing, data analysis platform, data mining algorithms, data visualization, and its applications have been analyzed respectively. Finally, the future explorations about water resources big data have been recommended from the following aspects:exploring data integrated methods, developing data mining algorithms, establishing the data security mechanisms, and developing the integrated decision-making platform of water resources big data.