Monitor vehicle movement or location
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.
- Mark tires of parked vehicles with chalk and record time of marking, and return at regular intervals to ensure that parking time limits are not exceeded.
- Monitor or direct the movement of aircraft within an assigned air space or on the ground at airports to minimize delays and maximize safety.
- Monitor the arrival, parking, refueling, loading, and departure of all aircraft.
- Spot cars for loading and unloading at customer locations.
- Observe yard traffic to determine tracks available to accommodate inbound and outbound traffic.
- Monitor lights indicating obstructions or other trains ahead and watch for car and truck traffic at crossings to stay alert to potential hazards.
- Observe approaching vessels to determine size and speed, and listen for whistle signals indicating desire to pass.
- Observe positions of cars passing loading spouts, and swing spouts into the correct positions at the appropriate times.
- Monitor aircraft within a specific airspace, using radar, computer equipment, or visual references.
- Observe position and progress of vessels to ensure best use of lock spaces or bridge opening spaces.
- Check conditions and traffic at different altitudes in response to pilots' requests for altitude changes.
- Maintain and guard stations in bridges to check waterways for boat traffic.
- Raise drawbridges and observe passage of water traffic or lower drawbridges and raise automobile gates.
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 operations to ensure adequate performance”. 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.