Establishing a national water resources geodatabase system in Albania : a case study of challenges in a transitioning country

Water resources information in Albania is very scarce. The country does not have a consolidated monitoring network to collect hydrological and other related data and the quantity and quality of the carried out measurements carried out is limited. The water institutions are very fragmented and the monitored and collected data are being stored in different databases, and non-standardized formats, making it hard for the data to be easily retrieved and exchanged. This thesis explores the available water resources and related data that there is in Albania, and also in the European and Global level. The thesis provides some recommendations as to a way of establishing a water resources geodatabase for Albania focusing on some relevant guidelines from the European Commission and the World Meteorological Organization. In the second part of the thesis, a mean annual precipitation map is compiled as a demonstration of one of the uses of a geodatabase.