Creating a measured network

You can use RivEX to convert a river network to a fully measured network (a PolylineM FeatureClass).  Once the network is measured and you have assigned route ID's along your rivers you can then use ArcMap to map point and linear events along your network.

If you are unfamiliar with linear referencing you can read an overview on the ESRI website here.

RivEX can currently convert only Shapefiles into PolylineM FeatureClasses.  Therefore if your network is a geometric network or a coverage, RivEX will fail to build a measured network.  You can easily export your data to Shapefile format before using this tool.

Your data must have the associated projection file (.prj) which sets the data frame's units and you can create measurements in meters, kilometres or miles.

RivEX will generate metadata for the above process which you can read in ArcCatalog.  Remember the style sheet filters what you see, so you will need to swap between different style sheets to see specific information generated by RivEX.