According to the professional connotation and training objectives stipulated in the National Standard for Professional Teaching Quality of High Education, combined with the requirements of engineering education evaluation and certification, characteristics of social demand for water science and engineering specialty are systematically analyzed from 8 aspects, such as resource, sociality, environment and economy, etc. The results show that the social needs of this major have the characteristics of wide range, many influencing factors, high complexity and strong comprehensiveness, so that higher requirements are put forward for the construction of knowledge system for engineering education, the setting of curriculum system and the implementation of teaching system. Based on the concept of OBE, the knowledge system of engineering education is also put forward, which is suitable for the demand characteristics of water science and engineering specialty, and the coupling relationship between them is analyzed systematically.