Online monitoring of lightning incidence and severity in rural Zimbabwe

Ligthning phenomenon is a common occurrence in Southern Africa, particularly during the summer and rainy season. Cloud-to-ground lightning is a common natural atmospheric hazard in Zimbabwe. Despite, Zimbabwe being one of the countries with high casualty figures expressed as annual deaths per million, the country currently has no installed Lightning Location and Detection (LLD) System. The Meteorological Services Department of Zimbabwe appears to be relying on word of mouth in compiling statistics on lightning activity and lightning-related casualties in Zimbabwe. This paper presents an online monitoring system that monitors the incidence and severity of lightning and sends the acquired data to an online central server using GSM network in real time. It discusses the design and implementation of an Intelligent Electronic Device (IED) for online monitoring of lightning incidence and severity in rural Zimbabwe using GSM network. The intelligent electronic device captures the signals it receives from a lightning detector before sending the data to a central server using GSM network.Initial laboratory tests were carried out and the device managed to successfully send SMS messages to a central server.