RiverWare is a general river and reservoir modeling tool for operational scheduling and forecasting, planning, policy evaluation, and other operational analysis and decision processes. RiverWare has the capability to model hydrologic processes of reservoirs, river reaches, diversions, distribution canals, consumptive uses, shallow groundwater interaction, and conjunctive use. The software can also model hydropower production and energy uses; water rights, water ownership, and water accounting transactions; and water quality.

For multi-objective operational analysis and decision making, RiverWare provides an interface for expression of operational policies and two solvers: (1) rule-based simulation in which logical, prioritized statements are executed to set values in the model according to the policies expressed by the logic, and (2) linear preemptive goal programming optimizes each objective, including sets of soft constraints, in priority order, resulting in a solution that is optimal spatially and temporally. 

RiverWare includes numerous utilities and analysis tools that enhance usability. The system control table is a configurable spreadsheet view of the data in the model and provides an easy interface to use RiverWare as a near real-time operational decision-making tool. The data management interface utility allows automatic data imports and exports from/to any external data source. The multiple-run manager facilitates execution and output management of many runs for the purpose of generating probabilistic results or iterating while changing basin parameters. Various output and plotting options are provided for post-run analysis. The scenario manager is an interface in which stakeholders may set up and run alternative scenarios from a baseline model provided by a water management agency.