H1 2026 Evaluation
Bosnia and Herzegovina Reservoir Transparency
F1Opaque — Ranked #149 out of 167 countries
weight 30%
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Primary source evaluated
FHMZBIH — Federal Hydrometeorological Institute of the Federation of BiH
https://www.fhmzbih.gov.ba/latinica/HIDRO/index.phpDimension breakdown
Data Availability
20% of total score
No public portal publishes current reservoir storage volumes or percentage fill for major reservoirs (Jablanica, Rama, Buško blato, Bočac, Zvornik). FHMZBIH publishes daily river water levels at ~12 stations but these are river stage readings, not reservoir storage. EPBiH, ERS and EPHZHB — the three hydropower operators controlling these reservoirs — do not expose any storage or fill data online. The voda.ba ISV portal (Sava River Basin Agency) has a web-GIS public map and vodostaji section, but again covers river gauge stations rather than reservoir volumes. Hydrological yearbooks (PDF) exist covering water levels and flows, but the most recent edition online is 2017/2019, leaving a multi-year gap. Storage volume as a quantitative metric appears absent from all public-facing sources.
Technical Accessibility
15% of total score
No REST API exists for any reservoir or hydrological data source in Bosnia and Herzegovina. FHMZBIH serves water level data as HTML tables (no download, no JSON/CSV). Hydrological yearbooks are large PDFs with no machine-readable equivalent. The voda.ba ISV portal is ArcGIS-based and requires authentication for data export. The Sava HIS real-time platform (savahis.org) is inaccessible without institutional credentials. RHMZRS (Republika Srpska) offers automatic station data pages but again as display-only HTML. The administrative split between two entity-level institutes and three separate power utilities creates a fragmented landscape with no unified access point.
Coverage
30% of total score
Methodology v1.3.0 (capacity-weighted). Bosnia and Herzegovina's qualifying national reservoir capacity is approximately 7,000 hm³, with Bilećko (~1,280 hm³, Trebišnjica), Buško Jezero (~782 hm³, shared with HR), Rama (~480 hm³, Neretva), Jablanica (~318 hm³, Neretva), Višegrad (~110 hm³, Drina), Modrac (~91 hm³), Zvornik (~89 hm³, Drina shared with RS), Salakovac (~58 hm³), Bočac (~52 hm³, Vrbas) and Grabovica (~22 hm³) as the principal facilities. FHMZBIH and RHMZRS publish daily river gauge readings but never reservoir storage; EPBiH, ERS and EPHZHB run internal SCADA without public dashboards. Covered capacity is 0 hm³. Coverage = round(100 × 0 / 7,000) = 0.
Historical Depth
13% of total score
FHMZBIH publishes hydrological yearbooks as downloadable PDFs spanning from 1923 to approximately 2017-2019, with a gap for the conflict years 1992-2000. This represents an impressive long-run historical archive, but it covers river stage and flow, not reservoir storage volumes, and the series is now 6+ years stale online. RHMZRS makes no comparable historical archive publicly available online. The Sava River Basin Commission references hydrological yearbooks from 2006 in their documentation. No machine-readable time-series for reservoir storage is available. Historical depth in the narrow sense (years of accessible data) is penalised by the PDF-only format and the 2017-2019 cutoff for the most complete dataset.
Update Frequency
10% of total score
FHMZBIH river-level pages are updated daily (timestamps observed at 08:00 on the date of evaluation), and the RHMZRS automatic hydrological station network also appears to refresh daily. However, these daily updates are for river gauge readings — not for reservoir storage. Hydrological yearbooks are published annually with a 2-4 year lag. No real-time or sub-daily reservoir storage data exists publicly. Hydropower operators (EPBiH, ERS, EPHZHB) manage internal SCADA systems that presumably track storage in real time, but this data is not published. Score reflects the daily rhythm of river stations with a heavy penalty for the absence of actual reservoir fill data at any frequency.
Methodological Transparency
8% of total score
Reservoir capacity figures for major hydropower plants (Jablanica: 318 hm³, Bočac: 52.1 hm³, Buško blato: 782 hm³) are available from EPBiH and ERS corporate publications, Wikipedia, and engineering databases, but not via any formal open methodology document. FHMZBIH describes its hydrological station network and measurement programmes in general terms on its website, but no standardised methodology for reservoir monitoring or storage calculation is publicly documented. The Capacity Building Initiative for Transparency in BiH (UNDP, 2023) explicitly noted that current monitoring uses 'inconsistent methodologies between the different BiH entities', requiring new legal frameworks for data exchange. No volume-area-elevation curves or deadpool/live storage breakdowns are published for public consumption.
Language and Usability
5% of total score
The primary data sources — FHMZBIH (fhmzbih.gov.ba) and voda.ba — are available only in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian. There is no English-language version of either site's hydrological data section. The RHMZRS website (rhmzrs.com) offers a multi-language selector including English, making it the sole partial exception, though actual hydrological data pages remain untranslated. EPBiH has a limited English corporate website (epbih.ba/eng) describing its hydropower plants but providing no data. EPHZHB and ERS are predominantly Bosnian/Serbian-language only. The Sava River Commission publishes river basin management plan documents in English, but these are policy documents, not operational data portals.
Evaluator notes
Bosnia and Herzegovina presents one of the most fragmented reservoir transparency landscapes in the Western Balkans, shaped by its unique constitutional structure dividing water and energy governance between two entities (Federation of BiH and Republika Srpska) and the Brčko District. Hydropower is strategically important — accounting for roughly 33-60% of electricity generation depending on hydrology — yet public access to reservoir storage data is effectively non-existent. The Federal Hydrometeorological Institute (FHMZBIH) and its Republika Srpska counterpart (RHMZRS) both publish daily river gauge readings on their websites, and FHMZBIH maintains an impressive archive of hydrological yearbooks in PDF format dating back to 1923. However, neither institute publishes reservoir storage volumes or fill percentages for major facilities such as Jablanica (318 hm³, Neretva), Rama, Buško blato (782 hm³, the largest reservoir in Southeast Europe by area), Bočac (Vrbas), or Zvornik (Drina). The three hydropower utilities — EPBiH, EPHZHB and Elektroprivreda RS (ERS) — manage these reservoirs operationally through internal SCADA systems but publish no public data dashboards. The Sava River Basin Agency (voda.ba) operates an ISV portal with web-GIS capabilities, and the international Sava HIS real-time platform exists, but both are either display-only or require institutional access rather than public open-data APIs. Several structural factors worsen the transparency deficit. The Energy Community transparency benchmark (2017) assessed Bosnia and Herzegovina as having limited progress on electricity market data reporting to ENTSO-E, including hydropower reservoir data. A UNDP Capacity Building Initiative for Transparency report (2023) explicitly flagged that measurement methodologies are scattered and inconsistent between entities, requiring new legal frameworks. All primary language interfaces are in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, with only RHMZRS offering a nominal English option that does not extend to data content. No machine-readable formats (JSON, CSV, REST API) exist for any reservoir variable. The hydrological yearbook series, while historically rich, has a significant publication lag — the most recent edition accessible online covers 2017 or 2019 — making it unsuitable for current reservoir monitoring. The overall RTI score for Bosnia and Herzegovina is low, reflecting the systemic absence of public reservoir storage data rather than a lack of hydrological monitoring activity, which does exist at the entity level. A meaningful improvement pathway would require: (1) a unified national reservoir data portal combining FBiH and RS sources; (2) mandatory daily publication of reservoir storage by EPBiH, ERS and EPHZHB; (3) an open API layer on the existing voda.ba ISV infrastructure; and (4) resumption and acceleration of the hydrological yearbook publication cycle with machine-readable annexes.
Evaluated by Jaime Delgado · 2026-09-15 · Methodology v1.3.0