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Professionals · code 2165

Cartographers and surveyors

AI can draw the map from satellite images. Walking the boundary is still surveying.

Recording survey data and building maps from aerial and satellite images are where AI could take a fair chunk. Surveying land, mines and waterways in person it barely touches.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

Cartographers and surveyors determine the exact position of, or prepare and revise digital, graphic and pictorial maps, charts or other visual representation of, natural and constructed features and boundaries of land, seas, underground areas and celestial bodies, applying scientific and mathematical principles. Tasks include - (a) surveying, measuring and describing land surfaces, mines, underground surfaces, sea, river and lake beds; (b) noting exact position of various features and recording survey data in digital form; (c) making charts and maps to be used in determining navigable waters and channels and in planning construction of marine structures; (d) planning and conducting aerial photographic surveys; (e) designing, compiling and revising maps and charts using aerial and other photographs, satellite imagery, survey documents and data, existing maps and records, reports and statistics; (f) undertaking research and development of surveying and photogrammetric measurement systems, cadastral systems and land information systems; (g) studying and advising on technical, aesthetic and economic aspects of map production; (h) maintaining technical liaison and consultancy with other relevant specialists. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Aerial surveyor - Cadastral surveyor - Cartographer - Hydrographic surveyor - Land surveyor - Mine surveyor - Photogrammetrist Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Quantity surveyor - 2149 - Building surveyor - 3112 - Marine surveyor - 3115

  • land surveyor
  • geographic information systems specialist
  • cadastral technician
  • cartographer

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

56 / 100

Changing significantly

AI could do a real share of the everyday tasks. The job is changing shape, not vanishing.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Exposed: Gradient 2

349 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 8 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 43.9 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 43.9 = 56.1.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Exposed: Gradient 2”: A good share of the tasks are affected.

This job rates 38.1 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Cartographers and surveyors 56

v

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

  • Map-making from imagery.
  • Recording survey data.
  • GIS analysis.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Surveying land and sites.
  • Resolving boundary disputes.
  • Checking data on the ground.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Drones and lidar.
  • Digital twins.
  • Autonomous vehicle maps.

Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: Medium

40 could do without you

It could take over some of the work, and help with more. It could help with 76 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

38 how hands-on

Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 30 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

38 How
hands-on
30 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on

The small print

They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

From O*NET, averaged across 3 US jobs .

finger skill 40.7 · hand skill 31.3 · cramped spaces 17.7 · averaged · rule: hands-on under 50

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

The job, task by task

Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.

AI's favourite task here scores 60, against an average of 44. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 60

    Noting exact position of various features and recording survey data in digital form

    Medium
  2. 53

    Designing, compiling and revising maps and charts using aerial and other photographs, satellite imagery, survey documents and data, existing maps and records, reports and statistics

    Medium
  3. 50

    Studying and advising on technical, aesthetic and economic aspects of map production

    Medium
  4. 49

    Undertaking research and development of surveying and photogrammetric measurement systems, cadastral systems and land information systems

    Low
  5. 41

    Making charts and maps to be used in determining navigable waters and channels and in planning construction of marine structures

    Low
  6. 39

    Maintaining technical liaison and consultancy with other relevant specialists.

    Low
  7. 38

    Planning and conducting aerial photographic surveys

    Low
  8. 22

    Surveying, measuring and describing land surfaces, mines, underground surfaces, sea, river and lake beds

    Very Low

8 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Sidekick or replacement?

A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.

AI helps you
76
AI does it for you
40

Sidekick wins, by 36 points.

How good a match is this?

One Australian job matches, but only partly: not everyone in it does this job. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 2322

Meanwhile, in real life…

Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?

Tiny sample alert This job makes up 0.09% of all the conversations: a tiny slice. People using AI for a job isn't the same as AI being able to do it.

Out of every 100 conversations

33
67

worked through it together handed it over

The small print

Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job.

The data is sorted by US job, and this one matches 3 of them. We've combined them, counting each by how often it comes up in the conversations, so the busiest one counts most.

These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.

observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product

So, should surveyors and cartographers be worried?

Short answer: not worried, but paying attention. The job is changing.

Parts of it are changing. Recording survey data, making maps and advising on map production are rated Medium; systems research, charts, liaison and aerial surveys are Low; measuring land rates Very Low. AI and remote sensing take on mapping; fieldwork stays human.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.

Where this job could lead

None of the new jobs we've written up start from here yet. Could be you're the first. See the jobs AI is creating →

How are the neighbours doing?

There are 92 jobs in the “Professionals” family, averaging 61. This one is below the family average.

Pit this against any other job →