A Review of Laboratory Information Management System Design and Deployment for Civil Engineering Laboratories

Abstract

Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) represent a cornerstone of modern laboratory informatics, enabling systematic tracking, management, and integrity assurance of experimental data. Civil engineering laboratories, with their diverse portfolio of material, geotechnical, hydraulic, and structural testing procedures, present a distinctive set of informatics challenges that conventional LIMS solutions often inadequately address. This review article examines the theoretical foundations and practical deployment approaches for LIMS tailored to civil engineering laboratory environments, with particular attention to three interconnected open-source technologies: Docker containerisation, the Plone Content Management System, and the Zope Object Database (ZODB). By synthesising peer-reviewed literature and examining relevant technical frameworks, this review evaluates how Docker facilitates reproducible, portable, and scalable deployment of laboratory software systems; how Plone, as a mature Python-based enterprise content management system, provides an adaptable web application architecture for LIMS development; and how ZODB, as an object-oriented persistence layer natively integrated within the Zope/Plone ecosystem, offers flexible schema-free data modelling suited to the heterogeneous nature of civil engineering test data. The review further contextualises the Docker–Plone–ZODB technology stack within the broader discourse on FAIR data principles, open-source laboratory informatics, and digital transformation in engineering practice. The synthesis suggests that this technology stack presents a viable, cost-effective, and technically robust framework for LIMS development in resource-constrained civil engineering laboratory environments, whilst also highlighting challenges related to long-term scalability, community sustainability, and standards-based interoperability. The article concludes with a critical appraisal of existing research gaps and prospective directions for future inquiry.