The Institute of Meteorology and Water Management (IMWM) manages the national hydrological-meteorological service, which maintains the measurement network, processes data, and issues warnings, reports and announcements. There are five divisions of IMWM located around Poland. Each division includes numerous stations and scientific-research departments. The data gathered, processed and analysed by IMWM are space-related; therefore spatial information systems are indispensable for data processing and visualisation. In this paper we discuss the development of the model for GIS applications in the national hydro-meteorological service in Poland (IMWM).