Camtrap DP¶

Camtrap DP (Camera Trap Data Package) is a standardized data format developed by Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) specifically for camera trap data. It exists so camera-trap datasets can be shared, compared, and analyzed across different platforms and research groups without everyone inventing their own schema.

A package is a Frictionless Data Package — a datapackage.json descriptor plus tabular resources:

• Structured metadata about deployments, locations, and media files.
• Standardized observation/annotation data.
• Taxonomic information aligned with standard biodiversity databases (TRAPPER uses the GBIF Backbone).
• Project and dataset documentation embedded in the descriptor.

Why TRAPPER adopted it¶

Before Camtrap DP, every camera-trap platform exported data in its own shape, and turning one project's export into another's input format was manual, error-prone work. By exporting (and, eventually, importing) Camtrap DP packages, TRAPPER data is directly consumable by the standard's growing tool ecosystem — camtraptor (R), camtrap-dp.py (Python), GBIF's own ingestion pipeline — without a custom adapter per consumer.

Where it shows up in TRAPPER¶

• Export — Camtrap DP export turns a Classification Project's results into a package, with privacy redaction and optional publishing to Dataverse/Zenodo.
• AI Provider category mappings — the categories JSON on an AI Provider is itself in Camtrap-DP-flavoured format, sharing label semantics with exported observations.
• Deployment metadata fields — the import locations & deployments CSV template is aligned with the Camtrap DP deployments spec.

Further reading¶

• Standard homepage
• Specification (and successors)
• TRAPPER's exporter is built on the camtrap-package Python library (a git dependency, pinned in trapper/pyproject.toml) — there's no vendored copy of the spec itself in this workspace.