Helicopter-borne electromagnetic surveys for civil engineering in Japan

Helicopter-borne electromagnetic (HEM) systems were originally developed for the exploration of mineral deposits. The frequency range of a conventional HEM system for mineral exploration, however, is relatively low and so not invariably suitable for its application to the fields of civil engineering because of its poor resolution in the shallower part of the earth. A DIGHEM HEM system was acquired by Nippon Engineering, with the frequencies chosen by the senior author. The five frequencies range from 220 Hz (the lowest) to 137,500 Hz (the highest). These frequencies improve the resolution of materials in the shallower part while maintaining a depth of investigation of greater than 100 m. This paper describes six case histories of geological and geotechnical surveys for civil engineering using HEM. These case histories include HEM surveys for investigating landslide, an alluvial area, root selection of road construction, areas related to dam and tunnel construction, and the simultaneous joint inversion of HEM and CSAMT data for a deep tunnel. These survey results show that HEM has sufficient resolution in both horizontal and vertical directins to contribute significantly to outlining the regional geology and its engineering problems.