H1 2026 Evaluation
Montenegro Reservoir Transparency
F1Opaque — Ranked #156 out of 167 countries
weight 30%
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Primary source evaluated
Institute of Hydrometeorology and Seismology of Montenegro (IHMS/ZHMS)
https://www.meteo.co.me/Dimension breakdown
Data Availability
20% of total score
No national reservoir storage bulletin exists. IHMS/ZHMS publishes real-time river-station data (water level H, discharge Q) at 40 hydrological stations on meteo.co.me, but this covers rivers — not reservoir storage volumes. The dominant facilities, HPP Piva (Mratinje, ~880 Mm³) and HPP Perucica (Krupac, Slano, Vrtac reservoir system), are operated by EPCG, which publishes no public reservoir level or storage data. Occasional 'Hidrološki podaci' PDF reports appear on ZHMS (e.g. October 2024) but are not systematic reservoir bulletins. Montenegro's open data portal (data.gov.me) lists no water or reservoir datasets.
Technical Accessibility
15% of total score
No public REST API for any water or reservoir data. The IHMS documentation states that all monitoring data are available on meteo.co.me, and automatic station data are exchanged every 10 minutes; however, the website uses plain HTML with no downloadable CSV or JSON, and the site suffers from SSL certificate errors that prevent reliable programmatic access. An FTP distribution channel is mentioned in older IHMS documentation but is not publicly documented or accessible. No open data standard is applied to hydrological outputs. Registration is not formally required, but structured machine-readable access is effectively absent.
Coverage
30% of total score
Methodology v1.3.0 (capacity-weighted). Montenegro's qualifying national reservoir capacity is approximately 880 hm³, dominated by Piva/Mratinje (~880 hm³ behind EPCG's signature arch dam) with the Perucica system (Krupac ~13 hm³, Slano ~340 hm³, Vrtac ~22 hm³) and Otilovici (~18 hm³, Cehotina) adding meaningful storage. IHMS publishes river-station H/Q at 40 stations every 10 minutes but no reservoir-level data; EPCG publishes nothing operational. Covered capacity is 0 hm³. Coverage = round(100 × 0 / 880) = 0.
Historical Depth
13% of total score
IHMS maintains historical annual H and Q data from station establishment through 2005 in archival form, with annual records from 2009 to present accessible on meteo.co.me. Research publications use Montenegrin river discharge data back to 1946 (Danube basin stations) and 1961 (Adriatic basin). However, this historical depth applies exclusively to river flow at gauging stations, not reservoir storage. No machine-readable reservoir storage time series is publicly available for any time period. The Sava River Basin Commission includes limited Montenegrin hydrological station data in its Hidrološki Godišnjak yearbooks (2016–2021).
Update Frequency
10% of total score
IHMS automatic stations transmit meteorological and river-level data every 10 minutes, visible on meteo.co.me in near-real time. This cadence applies to rivers, not reservoirs. Reservoir-specific information is not updated publicly at any frequency. Dedicated hydrological data bulletins appear on an ad hoc basis — one confirmed report found for October 2024, with no regular weekly or monthly cadence for reservoir-level data comparable to practices in neighboring EU member states.
Methodological Transparency
8% of total score
IHMS holds ISO/IEC 17025 laboratory accreditation for physico-chemical, biochemical and radiological water quality parameters and publishes general descriptions of its monitoring network (40 hydrological stations, WMO-standard H and Q measurement). Montenegro reports protected-area and monitoring data to EEA/WISE under WFD transposition obligations as an EU candidate. However, no published methodology document addresses reservoir storage measurement, rating curves for dam operations, or how volume is derived from water-level readings. The EC's 2024–2025 progress reports note that water monitoring infrastructure remains 'at an early stage of development.' EPCG publishes no operational or measurement methodology for its reservoirs.
Language and Usability
5% of total score
The meteo.co.me website is available only in Montenegrin (Serbian-script Ijekavian). No English-language interface, navigation, or data labels exist on the primary hydrological portal. EPCG's corporate website (epcg.com) has an English section covering company information and production facilities, but no data portal. Statistical yearbooks from MONSTAT are published bilingually but contain no reservoir-level data. The EEA WISE Freshwater country profile for Montenegro exists in English but lacks almost all data fields, and the EU WFD WISE portal entry for Montenegro is largely empty.
Evaluator notes
Montenegro presents an acute transparency gap despite its EU-candidate status and relatively mature river-hydrology monitoring infrastructure. The Institute of Hydrometeorology and Seismology (IHMS, formerly ZHMS) operates 40 hydrological river stations with near-real-time data transmission and maintains historical river discharge records stretching back to the mid-20th century. However, reservoir storage — the metric most directly relevant to water security — is entirely absent from the public domain. The two EPCG-operated hydroelectric systems (HPP Piva with the ~880 Mm³ Mratinje reservoir, and HPP Perucica with its Nikšić plateau accumulations including Krupac, Slano and Vrtac) collectively represent virtually all of Montenegro's artificial storage capacity, and EPCG publishes neither current levels nor historical storage time series in any public format. The structural cause of this gap is institutional: IHMS is responsible for meteorological and river hydrology while reservoir operations fall exclusively under EPCG, a state energy utility with no enforceable public data-sharing obligations. Montenegro's open data portal (data.gov.me), established in 2018, was rated a 'beginner' in the 2022 EU Open Data Maturity report with only 146 datasets across all sectors; water and reservoir datasets are entirely absent. Under Chapter 27 of EU accession negotiations, the European Commission noted in 2024–2025 that water monitoring networks remain 'at an early stage of development,' and the closing benchmarks require Montenegro to strengthen alignment with the Water Framework Directive — which inherently demands improved monitoring and public reporting. For international researchers, the situation is compounded by the Montenegrin-only interface of meteo.co.me and the complete absence of machine-readable data formats. European datasets such as the EEA WISE Freshwater profile and the Sava Commission hydrological yearbooks provide some river-discharge context but no reservoir storage data. Satellite altimetry products (e.g., DAHITI, Copernicus) currently offer the only accessible storage time series for Piva Lake, derived from remote sensing rather than official in-situ reporting. Montenegro's RTI score would improve substantially if EPCG were required to publish periodic reservoir storage figures — a reform made plausible by the ongoing EU accession process and WFD alignment requirements.
Evaluated by Jaime Delgado · 2026-09-15 · Methodology v1.3.0