Geophysical surveying and mapping services
This industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in gathering, interpreting and mapping geophysical data. These establishments often specialize in locating and measuring the extent of subsurface resources, such as oil, gas and minerals, but they may also conduct surveys for engineering purposes. A variety of surveying techniques are used, including seismic, magnetic, gravity, electrical and electromagnetic, radioactive and remote sensing, depending on the purpose of the survey. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A
- Establishments · CanadaA
- 359
- Under 10 employeesA
- 76%
- Establishments · USA
- 1,019
- Employment · USA
- 7,249
- Payroll · USA
- $710M
Size and shape
How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.
Canadian establishments by number of employeesA
Of 359 Canadian establishments with employees, 76% have fewer than ten — an industry of very small operators.
Where they areA
Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
How businesses here compete
The structural profile of subsector 541, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.
Professional licensing is the barrier and the principal's time is the ceiling. Firms are built from a book of clients, and an aging partner group makes acquisition and succession the common entry.
- Who sets the price
- The firm, by reputation, against hourly-rate comparison.
- The software it runs on
- Practice management, time and billing, and a specialist tool per profession — the densest vertical-software territory in the economy.
Market screens and studies
Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.
Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 5413 Architectural, engineering and related services covers it.
Autodesk's AECO line alone runs at $3.583B and grew 22%, Trimble's AECO segment adds $1.499B and Bentley carries $1.46B of ARR in infrastructure engineering, and the file formats are the lock — RVT and DGN are read properly only by their owners. An entrant does not compete on features but on interoperability it does not control. Note the sizing here is a floor of $5.1B from Autodesk's and Trimble's disclosed AECO revenue alone, not a market estimate.
A $12.35B software market in 2026 growing 15.5% a year, and the two ends of it are both closed. Esri holds an estimated 35-40% of it with ArcGIS and does not disclose a revenue figure, so the leader cannot even be sized from filings; beneath it QGIS is a mature, free, OGC-compliant desktop and the open-source stack (PostGIS, GeoServer, Leaflet, MapLibre) sets the price of the core capability at zero. An entrant is squeezed exactly as in enterprise search: free below, an unpriceable incumbent above. Distribution is the harder cut. The paying buyer is a municipality, utility or provincial agency that buys on a multi-year Enterprise Agreement through procurement, and Esri Canada sells that agreement plus its own consulting practice into the same account — the channel and the incumbent are the same organisation. Note what this record is not: 541370 is surveying and mapping SERVICES, and the fragmented implementation layer sitting on top of ArcGIS is a different market with different economics. That layer is a services business, not a software business, and is not screened here.
Software serving this industry
The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.
Sold across the wider branch
And what every business buys · 25 generic categories
Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.
Who works here
The occupations employed in Professional, scientific and technical services, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.
Concentrated in this sectorA
These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.
And the jobs every business has
Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. But note the shape of this industry: 76% of establishments have fewer than ten employees, and at that size most of these roles are one person wearing several hats, or bought in from outside.
Inside this industry
1 row sits directly beneath 54136. Each has a base report of its own.
| Code | Industry | Establishments · CA | What is known |
|---|---|---|---|
| 541360 | Geophysical surveying and mapping services | 359 | screened at 5413 |
Alongside it, under 5413 Architectural, engineering and related services
| Code | Industry | Establishments · CA | What is known |
|---|---|---|---|
| 54131 | Architectural services | 3,079 | screened at 5413 |
| 54132 | Landscape architectural services | 753 | screened at 5413 |
| 54133 | Engineering services | 11,910 | screened at 5413 |
| 54134 | Drafting services | 903 | screened at 5413 |
| 54135 | Building inspection services | 928 | screened at 5413 |
| 54137 | Surveying and mapping (except geophysical) services | 1,103 | Geospatial & GIS Platforms |
| 54138 | Testing laboratories | 1,439 | screened at 5413 |