The Finnish drainage basin register is one of the most important geospatial datasets maintained by the environmental administration. It serves the needs of water management, conservation and research, as well as national and international reporting and information system work related to water resources. The current drainage basin system does not fulfil the needs of various user groups and the new requirements that are set by i.a. water management. Therefore, the objective of the VALUE-project is to plan and specify the new Finnish drainage basin system (Finnish Environment Institute, SYKE) and to define the production methods for updating the register (Finnish Geodetic Institute, FGI). Furthermore, suitability of national and international digital elevation models (DEMs) for updating of the Finnish drainage basin register are investigated and research about uncertainty-aware terrain analysis making use of location-dependent non-stationary error models of elevation data will be carried out. The project is a co-operation between the SYKE and the FGI.