Abstract: The construction level of reservoirs and dams in China is leading in the world, but the management level is relatively lagging behind, which is highlighted by the backward management means, and low application degree of information technology, and accidents and even dam breaks still occur from time to time. It is urgent to strengthen the integration of traditional water conservancy and modern information technologies, and make full use of the latter such as big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning to realize intelligent diagnosis and smart management of reservoir dam safety. The National Key Research and Development Program of China during the 13th Five-Year Plan period "Key technologies and applications of reservoir dam safety diagnosis and smart management (2018YFC0407100)" is based on the representative hydropower projects in Lancang River Basin, aiming at efficient utilization of water resources, ensuring safety of reservoir dam and taking disaster prevention and mitigation of projects as a breakthrough point. After nearly four years of joint researches, a series of innovative achievements were made in the test equipments and intelligent diagnosis technologies for performance evolution of large and complex hydraulic structures, the key technologies of mutual feed simulation and intelligent monitoring of dam structures and service environment, and the key technologies of dam safety diagnosis and early warning based on big data. The relevant achievements provide scientific and technological support for further improving China's dam safety guarantee system and strengthening the "four pre-measures", and comprehensively guarantee the safe operation and comprehensive efficiency of reservoirs and dams. The achievements have extremely high scientific value and broad prospects for popularization and application as well as extremely remarkable social, economic and ecological environmental benefits.