Abstract: To ensure safety of the tower structure and the operation-maintenance of the Three Gorges ship lift, it is necessary to detect the deformation of the tower appearance. Because of the tower appearance inspection is easily affected by many factors such as navigation, weather and working conditions, the inspection quality and construction period are difficult to guarantee. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out scientific and efficient assessment and comparison of the tower appearance inspection scheme. In this paper, according to the structural characteristics of the main sections of the tower, several appearance inspection schemes were proposed, the advantages and disadvantages of various inspection schemes were comprehensively assessed by field investigation and expert voting. Through expert scoring and field experiment calculation, each index was assigned, and the entropy method was used to weight the index, forming a comprehensive assessment system with subjective and objective combination. Practice showed that the scheme optimized by the comprehensive assessment method had high detection quality and short construction period, which can provide reference for the decision-making of the appearance inspection scheme of similar high-rise buildings.