Despite Albania's rich water resources, the development of water supply network and sewerage system is unsatisfactory in most urban areas and is neither enough nor sustainable in rural areas. Therefore, one of the government's main objectives is the sustainable development of water supply and wastewater disposal plants, adapted to the needs of the population, the growing industry and the convergence to EU standards.

To this end, igr already created a master plan for water supply and wastewater disposal for the whole of Albania during 2011-2013. The objectives of the master plan are prioritizing projects in the water and wastewater sector along the short, medium and long-term time horizons of 2020, 2025 and 2040 and the better coordination of investments. In 2018/2019, the existing master plan was updated in terms of contents and technology.

Due to the extensive data collection, igr decided in 2011 to create the master plan as a GIS (geographic information system). As part of the update, the GIS architecture was completely redesigned and converted to open source software (QGIS). This makes it easy for the Albanian authorities to enter new data from the changing networks. The data is also accessible to the public via a browser. In addition, the changed legal and institutional general conditions were prepared, and an update of the investment priorities was made.

The update of the master plan was financed by the German Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) and AKUM (National Agency for Water Supply and Sewerage and Waste Infrastructure of Albania).

Stefanie Seiffert