Will AI replace Surveying and Mapping Technicians?
AI reaches a large part of this job’s work.
50/100
High exposure
More exposed to AI than 79% of US workers.
- AI already used in
- 0% of the work
- As AI tools mature: up to
- 90% of the work
What the job involves
Perform surveying and mapping duties, usually under the direction of an engineer, surveyor, cartographer, or photogrammetrist, to obtain data used for construction, mapmaking, boundary location, mining, or other purposes. May calculate mapmaking information and create maps from source data, such as surveying notes, aerial photography, satellite data, or other maps to show topographical features, political boundaries, and other features. May verify accuracy and completeness of maps.
Where AI reaches the work
The job’s main tasks, heaviest first, by how far AI reaches them.
Within reach(27)
- Calculate latitudes, longitudes, angles, areas, or other information for mapmaking, using survey field notes or reference tables.
- Enter Global Positioning System (GPS) data, legal deeds, field notes, or land survey reports into geographic information system (GIS) workstations so that information can be transformed into graphic land descriptions, such as maps and drawings.
- Collect information needed to carry out new surveys, using source maps, previous survey data, photographs, computer records, or other relevant information.
- Check all layers of maps to ensure accuracy, identifying and marking errors and making corrections.
- Identify and compile database information to create requested maps.
and 22 more
Out of reach(3)
- 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.
- Adjust and operate surveying instruments such as prisms, theodolites, electronic distance measuring equipment, or electronic data collectors.
- Position and hold the vertical rods, or targets, that theodolite operators use for sighting to measure angles, distances, and elevations.
Also called
Land Survey Technician (Land Survey Tech) · Mapping Technician (Mapping Tech) · Surveying Technician (Surveying Tech) · Land Survey Tech · Mapping Tech · Surveying Tech · Land Surveyor · Photogrammetric Technician (Photogrammetric Tech)
Related jobs
What these numbers mean
The score is the share of this job’s work, weighted by how important and frequent each task is, that AI could do in half the time: tasks an AI model could do alone count in full, tasks that need software built on AI count half.
“AI already used” is the share of the work in tasks where people are recorded using AI today. “As AI tools mature” counts every task AI could halve, with or without extra software.
The percentile compares the score with every job’s, weighted by how many people in the US do each one. Exposure means AI could change how the work is done, not that the job goes away. These are estimates for the typical job, not predictions.
Sources
- O*NET 31.0 Database, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration
- GPTs are GPTs: Labor market impact potential of LLMs (task labels), Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin & Rock (2023), OpenAI and University of Pennsylvania
- Anthropic Economic Index: labor market impacts (task penetration), Anthropic
- Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (national and metropolitan areas), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics