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Abstract

This report provides an overview of the camera trap dataset and the preprocessing steps used for automated report generation. It enables users to quickly assess the quality of their data through a concise summary generated by a series of automated checks. The report is structured into six main sections: Setup, Data Availability, Species Records, Validation, Annotation, and Observation Types by Capture Method, each offering a concise assessment of dataset integrity and readiness. At the conclusion of the report, you will receive an overall data quality classification, which will be one of the following:

  • Perfect: All key checks passed; no issues detected.
  • Acceptable: Minor issues found; the dataset remains usable, although corrections are recommended.
  • Needs Improvement: Major issues identified; corrections are mandatory before continuing.

If the status is Perfect or Acceptable, you may proceed with generating the final report. However, if the status is Needs Improvement, report generation is not possible due to major issues identified in the dataset, and the dataset must be improved before continuing.

Note: To ensure the highest quality automated report generation from your camera trap data, we strongly recommend improving your dataset whenever possible. If the status is Acceptable, consider refining it to reach the ideal Perfect level. This may require only minor adjustments, but it can make a significant difference in the final report. If the status is Needs Improvement, we advise resolving the identified issues to bring the dataset to at least the Acceptable level, and ideally to the Perfect standard.

Chapter 1: Setup

This chapter covers spatial and temporal checks. Dataset spans Netherlands (Data from three camera trapping pilots in the Amsterdam Water Supply Dunes of the Netherlands) with time zone UTC+2 and coordinate range 52.307°–52.323°N and 4.489°–4.503°E. All required CSV files (deployments.csv, media.csv, observations.csv) and JSON file are available in the dataset. The 3 distinct camera locations are distributed within a minimum convex polygon (MCP) of 0.583 km².

Spatial Data

This section summarizes the spatial quality of the camera-trap data extracted from the dataset files. It focuses specifically on location data, assessing issues such as missing values, duplicate entries, spatial outliers, and overall spatial structure. The complete results are presented in Table 1. If any issues are identified, we strongly recommend correcting the data before proceeding with report generation for your study site.

Duplicate entries (by coordinates, LocationName, or LocationID) are collapsed to the first occurrence, and any rows with missing values in any column are excluded from the report-generation analysis unless you edit them. If any issues are identified in the table below, we strongly recommend correcting the data before proceeding with report generation for your study site.

Note: If your dataset contains rows where the coordinates (longitude and latitude) are complete but either the LocationID or LocationName is missing, these records are still treated as missing. This is because, for spatial quality checks and analysis, both the geographic coordinates and their associated metadata (LocationID and LocationName) are equally important.

Table 1. Spatial summary of camera-trap locations
Metric Result Status
Number of locations 3 Before any filtering
Number of duplication in coordinates 0 🟢 No duplicated coordinates.
Number of duplication in LocationID 0 🟢 No duplicated locationIDs
Number of duplication in LocationName 0 🟢 No duplicated locationNames
Missing data 0 🟢 No missing data found
Total distinct coordinates 3 After removing duplicates/missing values
Mean distance between locations (m) 1052.39 Mean inter-location distance
Max distance between locations (m) 1722.74 AWD Zilkerpad and AWD van Limburg Stirumvallei
Min distance between locations (m) 717.21 AWD Wolfsveld and AWD van Limburg Stirumvallei
Spatial pattern opportunistic (indicated explicitly in metadata) ⚠️ Too few locations to detect a spatial pattern
Outliers High risk outlier = 0
Medium risk outlier = 0
Low risk outlier = 0
Non-Terrestrial = 0
🟢 No spatial outliers detected | 🟢 All locations are on land.

Temporal Data

This section summarizes the temporal patterns of the camera-trap dataset, including coverage over time, potential gaps, and any detected anomalies or outliers, which are presented in Table 2.

Table 2. Temporal coverage summary
Metric Result
Deployment year coverage 2021 – 2022 (🟢 complete)
Observation year coverage 2021 – 2022 (🟢 complete)
Deployment first/last setup 2021-08-13 09:42:57 – 2021-08-14 10:00:19
Observation first/last record 2021-08-13 22:01:17 – 2022-12-30 21:20:27
Temporal consistency 🟢 Years in observations and deployments are the same
First/last date check 🟢 All observations are on/after the first deployment start.
Month coverage span 2021: Aug–Dec
2022: Jan–Dec
Calendar coverage 506 of 506 days (100.0%)
Max gap between deployments 0 days (no gaps) 🟢
Min gap between deployments None (no gaps) 🟢
Missing deployment intervals None 🟢
Zero-length deployments None 🟢
Temporal outliers None 🟢
Invalid timestamp format None 🟢
Future observation timestamps None 🟢

Chapter 2: Data Availability

Review Essential Data Availability

In this chapter, we review all essential data components required for generating the report. These include both mandatory fields and necessary supporting fields or files that contribute to the completeness and overall quality of the final output. Table 3 provides a structured overview of the availability and completeness of these elements. While all fields listed in the table are important for generating a high-quality report, the bolded fields are mandatory. Their status must be marked as Complete; otherwise, any associated records with missing or partial values will be automatically excluded from the final output.

Table 3. Essential data availability and completeness
Category Field Status
Locations locationID 🟢 Complete
locationName 🟢 Complete
longitude 🟢 Complete
latitude 🟢 Complete
Deployment deploymentID 🟢 Complete
locationID 🟢 Complete
deployment_interval 🟢 Complete
deploymentStart 🟢 Complete
deploymentEnd 🟢 Complete
habitat 🔴 Incomplete (3 of 3 missing; 100%)
setupBy 🟢 Complete
baitUse 🟢 Complete
cameraHeight 🟢 Complete
Observations timestamps 🟢 Complete
observationType 🟡 Partial (121 of 6741 missing; 1.79%)
count 🟢 Complete
classifiedBy 🟢 Complete
taxonID 🟢 Complete (taxonID recorded for 2148 of 2148 animals; 100%) | 16 unique
behavior 🔴 Incomplete (behavior recorded for 0 of 2148 animals; 0%)
sex 🟡 Partial (sex recorded for 1 of 2148 animals; 0.05%)
lifeStage 🟡 Partial (lifeStage recorded for 3 of 2148 animals; 0.14%)
angle 🔴 Incomplete (angle recorded for 0 of 2148 animals; 0%)
radius 🔴 Incomplete (radius recorded for 0 of 2148 animals; 0%)
speed 🔴 Incomplete (speed recorded for 0 of 2148 animals; 0%)
individualID 🔴 Incomplete (individualID recorded for 0 of 2148 animals; 0%)
Media media timestamp 🟢 Complete
file.path 🟢 Complete
comments 🔴 Incomplete (30503 of 30503 missing; 100%)
favourite 🟢 Complete
Sequences nrphotos 🟢 Complete
captureMethod 🟢 Complete
Taxonomy taxonID 17 unique taxonID identified
scientificName 🟢 Complete
vernacularNames.nld 🟢 Complete
vernacularNames.eng 🟢 Complete
Additional Files habitat.csv 🟢 Complete
spatial boundary (e.g., shapefile) 🟢 Complete

Chapter 4: Validation

In this chapter, we summarize the classification and validation results of the observation data. The ‘CaptureMethod’ column indicates the method used to capture each image, which may include motion detection, time-lapse, or other mechanisms depending on the camera trap setup. The columns ‘Human’, ‘Machine’, and ‘NA_Classification’ represent the number and percentage of observations classified manually by a human, by an automated machine model, or left unclassified (NA), respectively. NA values often result from blank images, errors, or missing data. The ‘Machine_Animal’ column reports how many machine-classified observations were identified as animals, along with their percentage out of all machine classifications for that method. Finally, ‘Validated_Animal’ shows how many of those machine-identified animals were subsequently validated by a human, indicating human-confirmed correctness of the machine prediction. Collectively, this summary helps evaluate both the extent and reliability of the classification process across capture methods. In cases where validation rates are low or discrepancies are noted, users are encouraged to revisit the raw data for quality control, potential retraining of models, or targeted human review of specific subsets.

Table 4. Classification and validation summary
captureMethod Human Machine NA_Classification Total Machine_Animal Validated_Animal
motionDetection 3507 (52%) 3234 (48%) 0 (0%) 6741 315 (9.7%) 0 (0%)
TOTAL 3507 (52%) 3234 (48%) 0 (0%) 6741 315 (9.7%) 0 (0%)

Chapter 5: Annotation

In this chapter, we provide an overview of annotation confidence in the camera-trap observations. The summary distinguishes between machine-generated and human-generated classifications and highlights the variation in confidence scores across annotation methods. This section helps assess annotation reliability, identify records below selected confidence thresholds, and evaluate whether additional quality control or review may be needed before ecological reporting.

Table 5. Summary of machine and human annotation confidence scores

Machine Classification Confidence

Statistic Value
Minimum Confidence Score 0.80
Maximum Confidence Score 0.97
Mean Confidence Score 0.85
Below Threshold (<0.8) 13
Total Annotations 330

Human Classification Confidence

Statistic Value
Minimum Confidence Score 0.50
Maximum Confidence Score 0.50
Mean Confidence Score 0.50
Below Threshold (<1) 0
Total Annotations 50

Chapter 6: Observation Types by Capture Method

This figure summarizes observation types by capture method (Motion, TimeLapse) and overall. Each pie shows the within-method percentage of each observation type—animal, human, vehicle, blank, unknown, and unclassified; providing a quick view of what was observed and its relative weight in the dataset.

Motion

Figure 1. Distribution of observation types for motion-detection records. Slices show the percentage contribution of each observation type within this capture method.

Total

Figure 3. Overall distribution of observation types across all capture methods. Slices show the percentage contribution of each observation type in the full dataset.

Conclusion

Based on results across five key sections—Spatial, Temporal, Data Availability, Validation, and Annotation, this dataset is classified as Acceptable — Minor issues found; the dataset remains usable, although corrections are recommended.

Acknowledgment

This report was generated using the camtrapReport R package, developed by Elham Ebrahimi at Wageningen University & Research and Utrecht University, the Netherlands. The development of camtrapReport was supported by Biodiversa+ through the Big Picture project. We also gratefully acknowledge the European Observatory of Wildlife network for its contribution to package testing. Users are kindly requested to cite the package when using camtrapReport or publishing results derived from it.