Research on the Lightning Information Management System Based on GIS

Lightning disaster has caused billions of dollars of property and infrastructure damages, unexpected disruption to socioeconomic activities and tragic loss of human beings each year. Considerable work has been done on lightning mechanism and its detection approach. However, little work was concerned about the effective management of lightning. In this paper, both a geographic information science (GIS) and a database management system (DBMS) were used to manage the lightning spatial data and provide service products in the proposed system. Some of the basic methods and strategies such as architecture design, function dividing and database classification were outlined. The lightning spatial database comprises data on lightning thematic, fundamental geographic and other raster imagery data, readily providing information for further development of lightning relevant applications. The proposed system was exemplified in Hainan area. As the system runs stable and provides a valuable tool for the further study on lightning, it can be recommended to a national level of China.