The significance of detection of urban active faults and the general situation concerning detection of urban active faults in the world are briefly introduced. In a brief description of the basic principles of anti-disturbance and high-resolution shallow seismic exploration, the stress is put on the excitation of seismic sources, the performance of digital seismographs, receiving mode and conditions, geometry as well as data acquisition, processing and interpretation in the anti-disturbance and high-resolution shallow seismic exploration of urban active faults. The study indicates that a controlled seismic source with a linear or nonlinear frequency-conversion scanning function and the relevant seismographs must be used in data acquisition, as well as working methods for small group interval, small offset, multi-channel receiving, short-array and high-frequency detectors for receiving are used. Attention should be paid to the application of techniques for static correction of refraction, noise suppressing, high-precision analysis of velocity, wavelet compressing, zero-phasing of wavelet and pre-stacking migration to data processing and interpretation. Finally, some cases of anti-disturbance and high-resolution shallow seismic exploration of urban active faults are present in the paper. The significance of detection of urban active faults and the general situation concerning detection of urban active faults in the world are briefly introduced. In a brief description of the basic principles of anti-disturbance and high-resolution shallow seismic exploration, the stress is put on the excitation of seismic sources, the performance of digital seismographs, receiving mode and conditions, geometry as well as data acquisition, processing and interpretation in the anti-disturbance and high-resolution shallow seismic exploration of urban active faults. The study indicates that a controlled seismic source with a linear or nonlinear frequency-conversion scanning function and the relevant seismographs be be used in data acquisition, as well as working methods for small group interval, small offset, multi-channel receiving, short-array and high-frequency detectors for receiving are used. Attention should be paid to the application of techniques for static correction of refractio n, noise suppressing, high-precision analysis of velocity, wavelet compressing, zero-phasing of wavelet and pre-stacking migration to data processing and interpretation. Finally, some cases of anti-disturbance and high-resolution shallow seismic exploration of urban active faults are present in the paper.