The Reservoir
Essays on water-data transparency
Behind-the-scenes notes, methodology deep-dives, country case studies, and observations from building the world's first systematic ranking of reservoir-data openness.
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Introducing the Reservoir Transparency Index: H1 2026
The inaugural, semi-annual ranking of how openly countries publish their reservoir storage data. The H1 2026 edition evaluated 194 countries — and the median one scores F.
The perfect score: what it would take for a country to reach 100/100 on the RTI
No country scores 100 on the Reservoir Transparency Index — Norway leads at 89.3. A perfect score isn't about having the most water; it's seven concrete things, and every one of them is already done by some country today.
Strategic withholding: when reservoir data becomes a diplomatic weapon
Egypt hides Aswan storage from public view. Ethiopia keeps GERD opaque. Kyrgyzstan actively pulled Toktogul data in 2025. The pattern is consistent: upstream-downstream tension produces deliberate opacity.
How we evaluated 194 countries (and what we got wrong the first time)
Behind the scenes: parallel research agents, denominators that needed three revisions, and the methodology bug that mis-graded India for two months. A transparent post-mortem.