On the Use of Benford’s Law to Assess the Quality of the Data Provided by Lightning Locating Systems

Lightning causes significant damage and casualties globally by directly striking humans and livestock, by igniting forest fires, and by inducing electrical surges in electronic infrastructure, airplanes, rockets, etc. Monitoring the evolution of thunderstorms by tracking lightning events using lightning locating systems can help prepare for and mitigate these disasters. In this work, we propose to use Benford’s law to assess the quality of the data provided by lightning locating systems. The Jensen–Shannon and Wasserstein distances between the recorded data distribution and Benford’s distribution are used as metrics for measuring the performance of the lightning locating systems. The data are provided by the European lightning detection network (EUCLID) for the years from 2000 to 2020. The two decades consist of three time windows between which the lightning locating system underwent several upgrades to improve the detection of both positive and negative strokes. The analysis shows that the agreement with Benford’s law is consistent with the expected behavior caused by the applied upgrades to the system throughout the years. The study suggests that the proposed approach can be used to test the success of software and hardware upgrades and to monitor the performance of lightning locating systems.