Armenia Reservoir Transparency

The Ministry of Environment publishes daily (workday) ZIP archives on data.opendata.am containing PDF and XLSX files with water levels for Lake Sevan and volumes for a handful of major reservoirs (Akhuryan, Aparan, Azat, Marmarik, Arpi). However, the entire Vorotan hydropower cascade — Spandaryan, Tatev, Tolors, Shamb, Angeghakot — has no public data: the Hydrometeorological Monitoring Center confirmed it conducts no hydrological observations at these sites. With 87 national reservoirs, only ~5 receive public volume reporting, and the most strategic cluster is completely absent. Data for 2023 appears to have stopped updating after April 2023.

No REST API or machine-readable endpoint exists for reservoir storage data. Files are distributed as ZIP archives containing PDFs (primary format) and some XLSX spreadsheets, hosted on Google Drive links embedded in the data.opendata.am catalog. Access requires navigating the catalog, downloading ZIPs, and extracting tabular data from PDFs — a significant barrier for programmatic use. A separate GIS dataset (armsis-49) provides reservoir polygons via WMS/WFS but contains no storage volume time series. The EU4Environment programme explicitly identifies this as a structural gap, noting that Armenian water authorities publish data 'in non-machine-readable formats'.

v1.3.0 capacity-weighted with conservative estimation applied 2026-05-29. Armenia total national reservoir storage capacity ~1,200 hm³ across 12–15 reservoirs above 10 hm³, with Lake Sevan as the dominant national hydrological centrepiece. Major artificial reservoirs include Akhuryan (~525 hm³, shared with Turkey), Aparan (~91 hm³), Azat (~70 hm³), Marmarik (~30 hm³), Arpi (~105 hm³), plus the Vorotan cascade — Spandaryan (~257 hm³), Tatev (~60 hm³), Tolors (~99 hm³), Shamb (~14 hm³), Angeghakot — operated by Contour Global. COVERED capacity ≈ 420 hm³ on a conservative basis via Ministry of Environment / NSS Hydrometeorological Monitoring Center daily ZIP archives covering Lake Sevan and a handful of named reservoirs. coverage = round(100 × 420 / 1,200) = 35. The conservative downward revision from 42 reflects that the entire Vorotan hydropower cascade (~430 hm³) has no public monitoring (HMC confirmed no observations), that the public data pipeline appears stalled after April 2023, that smaller reservoirs are absent from the published series, and that even within the named reservoirs only levels (not full storage curves) are disclosed.

The opendata.am catalog holds a 2021 complete daily monitoring dataset and annual/monthly archives going back to 2016 (Lake Sevan water balance). Sevan-specific water quality monthly data covers 2016–2023. The national hydrometric network dates to 1924 and long-term records exist institutionally, but the vast majority of this historical data is not machine-readable or publicly downloadable online. The SEIS-Sevan portal, which offered additional historical records, became unreachable after 2020 with data not updated since 2015. Effective online machine-readable history is approximately 7 years (2016–2023) for Sevan, and 2–3 years for other reservoirs.

The dataset metadata states daily (workday) publication frequency, which is relatively good. However, the last confirmed update in the open catalog is April 2023, raising serious doubts about continuity. The Hydrometeorological Monitoring Center issues daily bulletins that are referenced in media reports (e.g. April 2022 reservoir comparisons), indicating operational daily monitoring exists for the covered reservoirs, but reliable public delivery to the open data portal has broken down. Score reflects the stated daily cadence discounted heavily for the publication gap.

No formally published measurement methodology, elevation-volume curves, or capacity verification documents are available for Armenia's reservoirs through any public portal. The State Water Cadastre — which is meant to record such technical data — explicitly lacks open public access; a 2013 IWRM assessment noted open access was unavailable and recommended building online query capabilities. EU4Environment has harmonized water quality indicators with EEA templates (published on ecoportal.am), which represents a partial positive, but this covers water quality parameters rather than storage volume methodology. Capacity figures for reservoirs are cited in engineering literature and Wikipedia but are not traceable to published official elevation-volume tables.

Both data.opendata.am and ecoportal.am offer full English-language interfaces, metadata, and dataset descriptions. The Armenian Water Atlas (water.rem.am) also has an English version. However, the actual monitoring data files — the daily PDF bulletins containing reservoir volume tables — are produced in Armenian only. The SCWS institutional portal (scws.am) has an English version but contains no data. EcoPortal publishes indicator narratives in English aligned with EEA standards. Partial credit: the portals are navigable in English but the underlying data documents are Armenian-language.