Performance evaluation of the SALDN using highspeed camera footage of ground truth lightning events over Johannesburg, South Africa

The performance of the South African Lightning Detection Network (SALDN) with regards to detection efficiency and location accuracy is presented in this paper. The performance is evaluated over a region in South Africa by using high-speed camera footage of ground truth lightning events, time-correlated with data from the SALDN. The data set contains 128 flashes which were recorded with high-speed cameras. The flash detection efficiency of the network is 88.3 % and the stroke detection efficiency is 72.1 %. The location accuracy has a median location error of 67.7 m based on 71 events which attached to the Hillbrow and Sentech Towers.