Many attempts over several decades have been made to develop priority lists of important rivers for different values (e.g., angling, kayaking, irrigation, native birds) in New Zealand. Apart from one or two of these most have lacked clear methods, have been data poor, have been ad hoc, and perhaps worst of all, have not been standardised to provide a method that could be applied to all values. The River Values Assessment System (RiVAS) is a multi criteria analysis based tool that enables any set of rivers to be prioritised for any specified value.