In the aim of testifying the efficiency and feasibility of shuffled frog leaping algorithm(SFLA)- projection pursuit (PP) model in assessing utilization efficiency of regional water resources, an evaluation system consisting 15 indexes in terms of comprehensive aspect, industry, agriculture, living and ecological environment was established. Furthermore, SFLA algorithm was used to optimize the best projection direction of PP model. In consequence, a SFLA-PP model for evaluating utilization efficiency was proposed and compared with PP model optimized by invasive weed optimization (IWO) algorithm, particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm and cuckoo search (CS) PP algorithm, respectively. Then an evaluation standard of four levels (high, medium-high, medium and low) was constructed on the basis of the mean value and standard deviation σ of the model projection series. Eight counties of Wenshan autonomous prefecture were chosen for case analysis. Results showed that the fitness value of PP model optimized with SFLA algorithm was 715.800 2, superior to that with IWO, PSO and CS algorithm, with better precision and ability of seeking optimum extreme value. According to SFLA-PP model, the utilization efficiency of Wenshan City and Yanshan County was evaluated as high level, and that of Malipo County was evaluated as low level, and the remaining five counties as medium level. The utilization efficiency of water resources in the study area was at high level in general. Case evaluation and sorted results of SFLA-PP model were the same with those of IWO-PP model, but different from PSO-PP and CS-PP model. Finally, examples demonstrated that the solving accuracy of the four intelligent algorithms was crucial for the evaluation results.