Abstract: Good water exchange is very essential, not only for improving the water environment, but also for enhancing the landscape effect around the water. The diversion replacement method is significant for promoting water exchange. However, the numerical simulation method used to carry out water exchange research operates at a high time cost with low calculation efficiency. Moreover, artificially changing parameters have numerous limitations and are not conducive for finding the optimal water exchange scheme. To solve this problem, we established the optimization model of water exchange based on the radial basis function (RBF) surrogate model and used the particle swarm optimization to find the optimal solution for the surrogate model. To verify the feasibility and superiority of the method, we established an RBF surrogate model based on the initial plan of the harbor pool of an artificial island yacht villa and solved it. This example showed that: (1) The water exchange optimization model based on the RBF surrogate model had high precision. (2) The order of time required by the water exchange optimization model based on the RBF surrogate model was in seconds, while the order of time required by the traditional numerical simulation was in hours. (3) The particle swarm optimization, used to solve the established water exchange optimization model based on the RBF surrogate model, obtained the optimal water exchange scheme for the study area. The results were compared with the optimal scheme results obtained through the surrogate model where the difference between the two is negligible.