Measure environmental characteristics
Little of this can be handed to software today.
This happens in the physical world, so software agents do not touch it. Automation here means robotics and machinery, which is a different market from the one mapped on this site, on a much slower clock.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Physical, manual and inspection work |
| Jobs that do it | 8 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | None |
| O*NET activity | Monitoring Processes, Materials, or Surroundings (4.A.1.a.2) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 8 occupations that perform it.
- Inventory or estimate plant and wildlife populations.
- Measure and assess vegetation resources for biological assessment companies, environmental impact statements, and rangeland monitoring programs.
- Survey park to determine forest conditions and distribution and abundance of fauna and flora.
- Map forest area soils and vegetation to estimate the amount of standing timber and future value and growth.
- Measure radio, infrared, gamma, and x-ray emissions from extraterrestrial sources.
- Measure wind, temperature, and humidity in the upper atmosphere, using weather balloons.
- Measure characteristics of the Earth, such as gravity or magnetic fields, using equipment such as seismographs, gravimeters, torsion balances, or magnetometers.
- Measure and graph phenomena such as lake levels, stream flows, and changes in water volumes.
- Calculate orbits and determine sizes, shapes, brightness, and motions of different celestial bodies.
- Assess ground or surface water movement to provide advice on issues, such as waste management, route and site selection, or the restoration of contaminated sites.
What we would actually use
Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.
Nothing on this site applies. Automation here is robotics and machinery, a different market on a much slower clock, and no software subscription moves it.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
8 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Monitor environmental conditions”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.