Standards
Camtrap DP
Camtrap DP is the open standard for exchanging and archiving camera-trap data. It packages a whole study — the cameras, the files, and what was seen — into one self-describing dataset that other tools can read, years after the season ends.
Camera traps produce a lot of images and very little structure. Most manufacturer apps keep the data in their own format, in a cloud you don't control. Move to another tool, or come back three seasons later, and the meaning is gone: which camera, where, running how long, and what the labels actually mean. Camtrap DP exists to fix that. It's a common language for camera-trap data, so a dataset still makes sense outside the app that produced it.
The three tables
A Camtrap DP package describes a study in three linked tables:
- Deployments — each camera placement: location, start and end, height, and survey effort. This is what makes the data comparable.
- Media — the individual photos and videos, with capture times, linked to their deployment.
- Observations — what was identified in the media: species, counts, and whether a person or the AI made the call.
The package is built on Frictionless Data, a widely supported way of describing tabular data, so the files come with a machine-readable schema. Any tool that reads Frictionless can validate and open it. It's maintained under Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) and supported by GBIF, which means it's a community standard, not one vendor's format.
How it connects to Darwin Core and GBIF
Camtrap DP is designed to map onto Darwin Core, the standard behind the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). So a camera-trap dataset can become occurrence records published alongside the rest of the world's biodiversity data. For a reserve or a research group, that's the difference between a pile of JPEGs and a dataset that counts toward the record — findable, citable, and reusable. It's the practical route to FAIR data: findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable.
Who reads Camtrap DP
Because it's an open standard, the major camera-trap platforms read it: Agouti, TRAPPER, and Wildlife Insights among them. That's the point of a standard. Your data isn't locked to the tool that captured it. You can hand a Camtrap DP package to a partner, an archive, or a national repository, and it means the same thing everywhere.
Camtrap DP in Untamed Data
The platform exports your dataset as a Camtrap DP package: deployments, media, and observations, ready to take with you. A few things worth knowing up front. It's the data package, not the image files themselves — the records that describe your study, which is what the standard is for. It needs proper deployment metadata to produce a valid package: coordinates, a confirmed active period, and survey effort. And an organization admin runs the export.
Publishing on to Darwin Core and GBIF, and direct connectors into other tools, are the direction we're building toward, not available yet — we say so plainly on the standards & interoperability page. What's true today: you can export a standard package that others can read, so your data leaves in a shape you own.
Know when it ships
Darwin Core and GBIF publishing are on the way. Email us and we'll tell you the moment it's live, nothing else.
Why it matters for a monitoring program. Camtrap DP is the technical proof behind “you own your data.” Without an open export, owning your data in practice means downloading a CSV a vendor invented. With it, your monitoring still means something after the grant ends, the team changes, or you move tools. See how it fits relative abundance and survey effort, and where camera-trap evidence feeds Natura 2000 reporting.
