Managing your drone data through the data life cycle: RDA guidelines for FAIR and responsible RPAS data use

The use of Remotely Piloted Aerial Systems (RPAS), also referenced as Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and more generally as drones, is increasingly prevalent across various scientific disciplines, enabling the collection of large volumes of data for diverse research applications. However, the volume of data generated and the absence of standardised workflows often complicate data sharing and publication. As part of the Research Data Alliance (RDA) Small Uncrewed Aircraft and Autonomous Platforms Data Working Group, we have developed guidelines on how best to improve the Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability (FAIR, Wilkinson et al. 2016) of these data while taking into account legal, privacy and ethical considerations. In this document, we summarise our working group activities and present our recommendations with a particular focus on mission planning, data collection, ethical considerations, data pipeline description, data storage, data format, and interoperability aspects. The Working Group was based on outputs from the RDA sUAS Data Interest Group (Wyngaard et al., 2019).