Abstract: Safety monitoring is an irreplaceable important means to ensure the safe operation of dams. With the development of dam risk management, the traditional dam safety monitoring technology can not fully meet the risk management needs. From the perspective of risk analysis, the failure mode, effects and criticality analysis method (FMECA) was introduced in this paper, and the workflow and optimization technology of the old dam monitoring system were discussed. Taking Shima Reservoir in Jiangxi Province as a case, the key number of risk elements was analyzed and calculated, and then sorted, the targeted monitoring facility optimization scheme was put forward at last. The improved monitoring facilities can effectively improve the pertinence have great popularization values.