Sustainable Open-Data Management for Field Research: A Cloud-Based Approach in the Underlandscape Project

Abstract

Field-based research projects require a robust suite of ICT services to support data acquisition, documentation, storage, and dissemination. A key challenge lies in ensuring the sustainability of data management - not only during the project's funded period but also beyond its conclusion, when maintenance and support often depend on voluntary efforts. In the Underlandscape project, we tackled this challenge by extensively leveraging public cloud services while minimizing reliance on complex custom infrastructure. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the project's final infrastructure, detailing the adopted data formats, the cloud-based solutions enabling data management, and the custom applications developed for system integration.