This PhD work provides methodological tools for the fast interpretation of airborne transient electromagnetic data (ATEM). As our first step, we focused on the problem of 1D ground imaging, which is currently a standard treatment. Then, we focused on the fast 2D imaging problem. We proposed an empirical sensitivity function that allows fast 2D inversion. The results of the 2D empirical inversion when applied on both synthetic and real data sets are very promising. In the third part, we analyzed the effect of topography on the airborne EM data. For an inclined homogeneous half-space, we show that the direction of the ground induced current is parallel to the surface air/ground. Then, we proposed a method to take into account this effect. Finally, the tools developed during this PhD have been applied to a real VTEM data set acquired over the basin of Franceville, in Gabon.
