EADs 2025: Launch of the CHERISH Project’s UAV dataset on the Digital Repository of Ireland
To celebrate the European Archaeology Days 2025 the Discovery Programme is launching the CHERISH Project’s UAV dataset, now archived securely in the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) and available for anyone to use.
CHERISH (Climate, Heritage and Environments of Reefs, Islands, and Headlands) was a 6-year European-funded Ireland-Wales project, bringing together four partners across two nations: the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, the Discovery Programme: Centre for Archaeology and Innovation Ireland, Aberystwyth University: Department of Geography and Earth Sciences and Geological Survey, Ireland. The project began in January 2017 and ran until June 2023. It benefitted from €4.9 million through the Ireland-Wales 2014-2020 Programme.
CHERISH was a truly cross-disciplinary project aimed at raising awareness and understanding of the past, present and near-future impacts of climate change, storminess, and extreme weather events on the rich cultural heritage of our sea and coast. It linked land and sea and employed a variety of techniques and methods to study some of the most iconic coastal locations in Ireland and Wales.
Over the course of the project, large amounts of survey data were gathered using a variety of survey techniques. Drones, or UAVs, were used extensively to monitor, map and record coastal sites at risk from climate change. All of this UAV data has now been archived in the Digital Repository of Ireland, where it will be digitally preserved long-term and made continuously accessible to the public.
The dataset includes 30 UAV digital photogrammetry surveys from 18 sites, with repeat surveys for 10 sites. In total there are 20435 digital objects in the collection. The metadata is available through a CC0 licence, which means it is completely open. The UAV data is available through a CC BY 4.0 licence, which means anyone can reuse the date, but they must give attribution to The Discovery Programme and CHERISH Project, preferably with the attribution statement and DOI.
Watch our short video to learn more about the CHERISH Project and UAV dataset. You can access the collection on the DRI website.
