{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/surveyors/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "Surveyors",
    "soc_code": "17-1022",
    "category": "Engineering",
    "us_employment": 50830,
    "median_annual_wage": 75440
  },
  "verdict": "SAFE",
  "risk_resistance": 72,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 13,
    "embodiment": 16,
    "liability_shield": 17,
    "trust_premium": 10,
    "judgment_accountability": 16
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "13 rather than 17 because the traverse itself, robotic total station operation, drone flight lines, point-cloud registration and even preliminary deed plotting are already software-driven — what holds the score up is monument recovery, following footsteps of the original surveyor, and reconciling a fence line that contradicts the record, which no dataset supplies.",
    "embodiment": "16 because you are locating pipes under blackberry thicket, chaining through wetland and snow, setting rebar and caps in frozen ground, and running control along live highway shoulders under MUTCD traffic setups — capped below 19 only because a growing share of hours are spent in the truck and at the CAD station rather than on the line.",
    "liability_shield": "17 because a plat or ALTA/NSPS survey carries a PLS seal that binds one named individual under state board statute — a licence with a specific exam, four-year experience requirement, and revocation authority — and that seal is what makes the boundary admissible; short of 20 only because much crew work is legally delegable to unlicensed technicians.",
    "trust_premium": "10 because repeat title companies, civil engineers and developers pick a surveyor they know will not blow the closing date, and the neighbor dispute goes better if the landowners trust the person walking their line, but a subdivision plat is accepted on the seal and the record, not on who drew it.",
    "judgment_accountability": "16 because you weigh senior rights, ambiguous calls-and-distances, unrecorded occupation, and a found monument of uncertain origin to decide which of two overlapping deeds controls — a decision that moves property value, gets deposed, and cannot be appealed to a procedure manual."
  },
  "rationale": "The modal surveyor splits time between field data collection with GPS/GNSS and total stations across raw terrain, and office work reducing that data into plats and legal descriptions. The office half — CAD drafting, coordinate math, deed text parsing, report generation, point-cloud processing — is being automated fast, but the licensed determination of where a boundary legally sits from conflicting deeds, old monuments, and occupation evidence is a judgment call a Professional Land Surveyor must seal and defend in court. Drones and scanners raise per-surveyor output rather than eliminating the person who must set the pin and own the call; note that the licensure shield is regulatory and could be loosened.",
  "outlook": "Headcount stays roughly flat to modestly up on infrastructure and construction demand, but the office-drafting half of the job compresses hard — value concentrates in licensed surveyors who resolve contested boundaries and seal the work.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "State boards (via NCEES model law adoption) explicitly extending the 'practice of surveying' definition to cover drone/LiDAR-derived boundary deliverables and AI-generated plats, requiring a PLS seal on any deliverable used for conveyance or permitting — plus rules barring 'as-built from photogrammetry' products from being sold without a seal. Several state boards (e.g., NC, TX) have already issued cease-and-desist letters against unlicensed drone mapping firms.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "Title insurers making an ALTA/NSPS Land Title Survey sealed by a licensed surveyor a condition of extended-coverage endorsement on commercial closings, rather than accepting survey-waiver affidavits — the reverse of the residential survey-waiver trend.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 1
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Task-mix shift as CAD drafting, deed-text parsing, and point-cloud registration are absorbed by software: the residual job becomes monument recovery, weighing conflicting senior/junior rights and occupation evidence, and expert testimony — the tier no vendor sells. This is the genuine two-tier case, and it raises resistance without any new law while shrinking headcount.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Courts continuing to treat the surveyor's boundary determination as expert opinion evidence rather than a computable output — e.g., rulings that an AI-derived boundary lacks the personal knowledge basis required under FRE 702/state analogues, forcing a named human to defend the retracement.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Trust premium is omitted deliberately: buyers of surveys (lenders, title companies, developers, DOTs) are price-driven and specify a seal, not a person — there is no realistic route to consumers paying extra for a human surveyor as such. The main downside risk is the mirror of the top lever: state legislatures loosening licensure scope or permitting 'survey waiver' products, which would cut liability_shield faster than task_resistance could rise."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 43430,
        "wage": 61140
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 45310,
        "wage": 62580
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 45220,
        "wage": 63420
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 43710,
        "wage": 65590
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 46390,
        "wage": 61600
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 47770,
        "wage": 63080
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 50740,
        "wage": 68540
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 53080,
        "wage": 72740
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 50830,
        "wage": 75440
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 17,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}