Will AI replace Surveying and Mapping Technicians?

Task exposure to today's AI

Moderate exposure

This is the occupation's typical task mix. Your own score can be up to 30 points higher or lower depending on how you work: routine share, people contact, judgment and how much you already use AI.

Will AI replace Surveying and Mapping Technicians?

Not entirely. Today's AI tools can take on about 34% of the typical work in this occupation, mostly: record survey measurements or descriptive data, using notes, drawings, sketches, or inked tracings. The parts that stay human include: Adjust and operate surveying instruments such as prisms, theodolites, electronic distance measuring equipment, or electronic data collectors.; Conduct surveys to ascertain the locations of natural features and man-made structures on the Earth's surface, underground, and underwater, using electronic distance-measuring equipment, such as GPS, and other surveying instruments.; Position and hold the vertical rods, or targets, that theodolite operators use for sighting to measure angles, distances, and elevations..

People who learn to use AI for the automatable parts keep the edge. The 3-phase plan below shows where to start.

Your human edge

• Adjust and operate surveying instruments such as prisms, theodolites, electronic distance measuring equipment, or electronic data collectors.
• Conduct surveys to ascertain the locations of natural features and man-made structures on the Earth's surface, underground, and underwater, using electronic distance-measuring equipment, such as GPS, and other surveying instruments.
• Position and hold the vertical rods, or targets, that theodolite operators use for sighting to measure angles, distances, and elevations.

AI tools to try

Related roles

• Cartographers and Photogrammetrists
• Geodetic Surveyors
• Geographic Information Systems Technologists and Technicians