Tracking the Motion of Large-Scale Lightning Events based on the Optical Flow Method

• Published in: IOP conference series. Earth and environmental science 2020-08, Vol.558 (4), p.42028
• Main Authors: Zhu, Yongqiong, Min, Wu, Cao, Zhenwei
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Lightning; Motion perception; Optical flow (image analysis); Property damage; Safety management; Satellite tracking; Warning
• ISSN: 1755-1307; 1755-1315
• DOI: 10.1088/1755-1315/558/4/042028

Lightning is a meteorological phenomenon and can cause the property damage and the loss of the lives. Tracking and warning the lightning is a very important issue in safety control and management for many fields. Some devices and corresponding analysis methods are suggested for this objective. Nowadays, the satellite and radar are two main devices used to track and warn lightning. However, their output is an indirect signal for the tracking and warning. So the false positive problem exists if only based on these two types of devices. Instead, this work proposes a new method. We use another kind of data from the lightning locator, which is the only device could accurately record the time, position and strength for one lightning occurrence. Meanwhile, in order to effectively apply this type data, an integrated method based on the optical flow method is proposed. On a real lightning process, the experiment's result proves our method's performance. Unlike the traditional methods that only track the representative center to stand for the motion of a group of lightning, the most outstanding advantage of our methods is the capability of detecting the minor motion of large-scale lightning events. Therefore, it could be used for the elaborate lightning warning.