H1 2026 Evaluation
Malaysia Reservoir Transparency
F34Opaque — Ranked #79 out of 167 countries
weight 30%
weight 20%
weight 15%
weight 13%
weight 10%
weight 8%
weight 5%
Primary source evaluated
JPS InfoKemarau — Department of Irrigation and Drainage Drought Monitoring Portal
http://infokemarau.water.gov.my/Dimension breakdown
Data Availability
20% of total score
Malaysia publishes reservoir storage levels (as percentage of effective capacity) for 49 dams through the InfoKemarau drought monitoring portal, with monthly PDF reports ('Laporan Taksiran Sumber Air, Kemarau dan Musim Kering') available for download. Penang Water Authority (PBA) publishes daily effective capacity percentages for its 3 dams. The MyWater Portal lists 16 JPS-managed dams with static capacity specs. However, storage data is fragmented across multiple agencies (JPS, LUAS/IWRIMS, state utilities), real-time dashboards for individual dam storage are not consolidated nationally, and major hydropower reservoirs (Kenyir/TNB, Bakun/Sarawak Energy) do not publish storage levels on any public portal.
Technical Accessibility
15% of total score
No documented REST API exists for Malaysian reservoir storage data. The developer.data.gov.my official open API platform offers APIs only for transport (GTFS), weather, and statistical datasets — no water level or reservoir storage endpoints. The SPRHIN portal (sprhin.water.gov.my) provides data on request via forms with payment for private users. InfoKemarau publishes monthly PDF reports. PBA Penang publishes HTML web pages. IWRIMS (LUAS Selangor) appears to be a portal but was inaccessible externally (403 Forbidden). Raw data download in machine-readable format (CSV/JSON) was not found for any portal.
Coverage
30% of total score
v1.3.0 capacity-weighted methodology applied 2026-05-29. Malaysia total national reservoir storage capacity ~75,000 hm³ across ~104 registered dams, dominated by Bakun Dam (~43,800 hm³, Sarawak Energy, no public data) and Kenyir/Sultan Mahmud (~13,600 hm³, TNB, no public data). COVERED capacity ≈ 10,000 hm³ via JPS InfoKemarau (49 dams, monthly PDF) + JPS MyWater Portal (16 JPS-managed dams) + PBA Penang (3 dams, daily) — excluding the two dominant hydropower reservoirs which are not publicly reported. coverage = round(100 × 10,000 / 75,000) = 13. Capacity-weighted coverage is substantially lower than the count-based view because the two largest reservoirs alone hold over 75% of national storage and are not publicly monitored.
Historical Depth
13% of total score
JPS maintains hydrological records going back to 1879 (earliest rainfall record in Kuala Lumpur) and has over 1,700 stations nationally with multi-decade archives. Historical data can be formally requested through sprhin.water.gov.my (free for government/academic, fee-based for private sector). Sarawak DID publishes Hydrological Yearbooks covering multi-year records. However, none of this historical reservoir storage data is freely downloadable or browsable online in a public-facing portal — it is locked behind application forms. The InfoKemarau monthly PDFs appear to begin circa 2020–2023, providing only a few years of downloadable archive.
Update Frequency
10% of total score
Penang Water Authority (PBA) updates reservoir effective capacity percentages daily on its public website (timestamps confirmed as day-by-day). InfoKemarau monthly PDF reports cover 49 dams at monthly frequency. The InfoKemarau portal also has a real-time water level page (realtime.cfm) but this was inaccessible during research. JPS Infobanjir collects telemetry from ~200 stations in near-real-time for flood purposes, but this covers river levels, not reservoir storage volumes/percentages. In summary: a daily-updated public portal exists only for Penang (3 dams); national coverage is effectively monthly PDF.
Methodological Transparency
8% of total score
JPS has published 32 Hydrological Procedures (HP series) since 1973 covering data collection standards, flood estimation, and instrumentation. The MyWater Portal publishes static design specifications for 16 JPS dams (height, catchment area, storage capacity in MCM, Normal Pool Level). PBA Penang publishes maximum effective capacity figures alongside current percentages. The InfoKemarau monthly reports explain that storage is derived from storage curves converting water-level telemetry readings to volume. However, full elevation-area-storage curves and measurement methodology are not published in downloadable form; the HP series documents must be purchased; and hydropower operator methodologies (TNB, Sarawak Energy) are opaque.
Language and Usability
5% of total score
The MyWater Portal offers bilingual EN/MY toggle. InfoKemarau homepage offers an English version (?lang=en). PBA Penang publishes its reservoir page entirely in English. The JPS WPLB FAQ portal is bilingual. Sarawak DID data requests are handled in both languages. However, the monthly PDF reports ('Laporan Taksiran Sumber Air') are published exclusively in Bahasa Malaysia. Overall, the public-facing web portals are substantially accessible in English, but the most data-rich documents (monthly reports) are Malay-only.
Evaluator notes
Malaysia has a functioning but fragmented reservoir storage publication ecosystem. The primary national data source is JPS's InfoKemarau portal, which publishes monthly PDF drought assessment reports covering 49 dams with storage percentages derived from telemetry-based storage curves. A parallel real-time water level monitoring system (JPS Infobanjir) covers ~200 stations but is oriented toward flood warning and river levels rather than reservoir storage volumes. State-level utilities add further coverage: Penang Water Authority (PBA) provides daily dam capacity percentages for 3 reservoirs publicly, and Selangor's LUAS runs the IWRIMS system. The MyWater Portal publishes static design specifications (capacity in MCM, Normal Pool Level) for 16 JPS-managed dams. The critical gap is that Malaysia's largest reservoirs by storage volume — Bakun Dam (~43,800 MCM, operated by Sarawak Energy for hydropower) and Kenyir/Sultan Mahmud Dam (~13,600 MCM, operated by TNB Generation) — publish no operational storage data publicly. These two reservoirs alone likely represent over 50% of national total storage. Sarawak Energy communicates controlled water release schedules via press release but provides no storage level dashboard. TNB makes no public storage disclosures for Kenyir. This means the publicly monitorable share of national storage is substantially lower than the 49-of-104 dam count suggests. On technical accessibility, Malaysia lags considerably behind comparable economies. The developer.data.gov.my open API platform offers transport, weather, and statistical endpoints but no hydrological or reservoir endpoints. SPRHIN provides data only via formal application with fee for private users. There is no documented REST API equivalent to USGS WaterServices or Spain's SAIH. The JPS Hydrological Procedures series (32 documents since 1973) provides good methodological grounding, but the procedure documents themselves must be purchased. The overall picture is a country with solid monitoring infrastructure and partial public disclosure, primarily through drought-context publications, with no machine-readable API layer.
Evaluated by Jaime Delgado · 2026-05-29 · Methodology v1.3.0
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