2006

19th International Lightning Detection Conference 24-25 April Tucson, Arizona, USA 1st International Lightning Meteorology Conference 26-27 April Tucson, Arizona, USA

MULTISCALE ANALYSIS OF LIGHTNING STRIKE MAPS Aram Faghfouri and Witold Kinsner, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada David Swatek, Manitoba Hydro, Winnipeg, Canada 1. INTRODUCTION Electric power utilities face increasing demand for service reliability. Since cloud-toground lightning strikes are among the most frequent yet least understood causes of service interruption, predicting the geographical and temporal distribution of the lightning strikes can help power system planners and designers improve the protection of new and existing transmission lines. Lightning is the transfer of significant charge between two charged objects. Lightning discharges can occur as cloud-tocloud, (C-C, intercloud and intracloud), cloudto-air, and cloud-to-ground (C-G). A C-G flash is typically composed of a sequence of individual C-G return strikes which transfer significant charge from the cloud to the ground, each strike exhibiting peak current in the range of a few kiloamperes (kA) to 300 kA (Global Atmospherics 1999). These flashes have a nominal duration of 20 to 50 microseconds (s), and are usually comprised of 2 to 3 strikes, but may vary between one and twenty. For most flashes, the strike which occur after the first strike of a flash contacts the earth at the same strike point as the first strike, because they travel through the channel established by the first strike. However, approximately one third of all flashes can contain strikes with different ground strike points. For practical purposes, researchers have defined a typical flash as a set of all C-G discharges which occur within 10 km of one another within a one second interval. The Canadian Lightning Detection Network (CLDN) is a network consisting of lightning detection sensors strategically located throughout Canada. The network provides both real-time data and archived lightning information. The network collects all the lightning strikes over time, and it has the best achievable location accuracy of 500 m, and time error less than 1.5 (s). In each data file, 14 different data specifications of lightning strikes are stored: date and time, latitude, longitude, peak current, chi-square value of the strike, ellipse semi-major and minor axis length value of the flash, ellipse angle (azimuth from the north) value, degrees of freedom, multiplicity, and number of sensors used in locating the strike (Global Atmospherics, 1999). Since the number of lightning strikes which hit the Earth is very large, visualization and study of individual lightning strikes are very difficult. Instead, one can focus on ensembles of the lightning strikes as their densities (number of strikes/area/time) and study their spatiotemporal distribution maps. Such maps are known as lightning strikes maps (LSMs). Figure 1 illustrates the LSM in Manitoba for the year 2002. The color intensity of the map represents the density of the strikes (number of strikes/km2/year). The red and white

Figure 1. Lightning strike map in Manitoba for the year 2002, superimposed on the geographical map in Manitoba. The thick black lines represent the Manitoba Hydro transmission lines. The unit of the numbers in the figure is number of strikes/km2/year.

represent the highest (16 and up) and the lowest (0.25 and lower) number of strikes/km2/year, respectively. Figure 1 indicates that the densities decrease from south to north and from west to east. Additionally, the west to east distribution of the densities is more homogenous than the south to north. The complicated scattering of the density clusters over the map generates complicated density distribution patterns which are nonuniform, nonlinear, and nonstationary. Since the lightning strikes are universal phenomena, similar maps can be extracted from the lightning strikes data of the other parts of the world as well. Due to the large number of lightning strikes and their stochastic spatial distribution, spatiotemporal prediction and study of the individual lightning strikes are very difficult. Instead, the LSMs as distribution ensemble of the lightning strikes can be used for characterization and modeling. Thus, another advantage of the LSMs is using them for prediction. In order to predict the distribution patterns of such maps, several stages are required, including modeling, characterization, classification, finding optimal number of classes of the data, and finding the physical meaning of each class. Modeling is the mathematical representation of the phenomenon which must be faithful to the physics of the phenomenon. Simulation of such a model provides numerical results which can be compared to the physical data. Since the physics of the LSMs is probabilistic, stochastic modeling of such maps is an appropriate approach. On the other hand, due to the stochastic modeling, each simulation run provides a different result which is different from the previous simulated results and from the physical data. Consequently, lightning strike location comparison of the physical data to the simulated results of such model is meaningless. In order to compare the simulated results to the physical data, characterization is used. Characterization is a physically meaningful mapping from the data space to a characteristic space. In such a characteristic space, features from the physical data and the simulated results are extracted and compared. There are two major approaches toward characterization: model-driven (MD) and datadriven (DD). In the MD approach, characteristics are selected from the model parameters (Petrov and DAlessandro 2002).

In the DD approach, the assumptions about the data are minimal and higher order statistics is the major tool for investigation and characterization of the data. In order to explore the physics of the LSMs and avoid incorrect assumptions, this work studies these phenomena based on the DD approach. Since such an approach uses statistical methods as its exploration tool extensively, defining physically meaningful probability density function (PDF) is very important for it. Such PDF estimation poses questions such as: (i) Since the PDFs can be used to distinguish patterns in the objects, what is important about such patterns, their shapes or sizes, as well as their actual size or rational size (scales)? (ii) Is it possible to focus on a specific size and neglect patterns with the larger and smaller sizes? (iii) Do patterns of different scales have any connection with one another? (iv) Since the estimated PDFs are functions, how can they be compared? In answer to these questions, it must be noted that the shape and size are the characteristics which can identify an object and consequently, they are both very important. On the other hand, there are many small and large patterns within the complicated structures such as the LSMs. Any analysis method which considers the patterns only in single scale, emphasizes some patterns and neglects the others. Nevertheless, the neglected patterns may provide better characteristics for distinction between the objects. A DD approach uses multiscale analysis for studying the object in a broad range of scales and provides a better investigation. A multiscale analysis is very similar to a magnifier which can investigate the details of small patterns in fine scales, and the overall structures of the large patterns in coarse scales. In order to compare the PDFs, the concept of entropy can be used, which is defined as the level of disorder in an object. Entropy of a PDF is a number and this makes the comparison between the PDFs trivial. If the entropies of two objects are similar, their distributions or patterns are considered similar. In this context, an object is called monofractal (self-similar) if its entropy holds a power-law relationship over several orders of scales. Multifractals are mixtures of monofractals (Peitgen et al. 1992). It has been shown that the LSMs in Manitoba have

multifractal structures (Faghfouri et al. 2004a, 2004b, 2005), and this property can be used for characterizing them. In order to characterize such fractal objects, multifractal measures such as Rnyi fractal dimension spectrum (RS) are required (Kinsner 2003). The final concern in any DD approach is the accuracy of the characterization. In other words, how do we show that the solution is close to the unknown asymptotic value. An answer to this question can be found through a study of the rate of convergence of vectors such as the RS, if sufficient data are available. Fortunately, the LSM data set available for the period 1998 to 2004 appear to be sufficient to show the convergence, as demonstrated in this paper. The importance of the statistical convergence in distribution is that it can validate the consistency of characterization for modeling. Due to the importance of characterization for modeling and prediction, this paper focuses on the multiscale analysis and characterization of the LSMs through the RS method. Additionally, the consistency of this characterization is investigated through convergence in distribution. This work demonstrates that the rate of convergence in distribution for the lightning strikes is such that the data of 7 years are sufficient for observing the spatial PDF convergence in distribution. Multifractality of the LSMs suggests that the multifractal modeling methods such as percolation are appropriate models for the LSMs (Cannons and Kinsner 1999). It should be noted that the methodology described in this paper is applicable not only to LSMs anywhere else, but also to other phenomena with complicated behavior. 2. METHODS DESIGN AND EXPERIMENTAL

Characterization inconsistency over time causes inconsistent modeling and prediction. This raises the question that what constitutes the characterization consistency in nonstationary structures such as the LSMs. Comparison of the yearly spatial PDFs of the lightning strikes indicates that they are very different and thus characterization of individual time windows of the lightning strikes data cannot lead to an appropriate characterization. An alternative to the PDF study of the spatial distribution of the LSMs over individual time windows is investigating the asymptotic behavior of the PDF over cumulative time segments. In other words, to investigate if the patterns of the LSMs converge to an ultimate distribution asymptotically. In general, there are two types of convergence: in probability, and in distribution. Although the convergence in probability (CIP) is the strongest form and other convergence types can be derived from it, according to the sparsity of the lightning strikes in the time and space, the available data set is insufficient for high resolution PDF estimation and conclusive results. Therefore, we focus on the convergence in distribution (CID), which is a very useful form of convergence, though it is weaker. If CID holds, after a sufficiently long time, the cumulative spatial distribution of the lightning strikes approaches to an ultimate distribution. The distribution convergence states that if F1 , F2 ,K are sequences of distribution functions corresponding to random variables X 1 , X 2 ,K and that F is a distribution function corresponding to a random variable X , such that the sequence F (a) = Pr( X a) , Xn converges towards
n

X in distribution, if
(1)

This section describes the critical techniques, and the designed experiments that are used in this paper. The actual experimental results are described in Section 3 in order to emphasize the relationship between these techniques without dispersing them by many details of the extensive results and their illustrations. 2.1. Convergence One of the most important issues about characterization and modeling is their consistency over time.

lim Fn (a ) = F (a )

for every real number a at which F is continuous. In order to have a better insight into the CID, it should be investigated in multiple scales. Thus, using the method which is described in Sec. 2.3 for the PDF estimation, the cumulative PDFs in different scales are calculated and compared to one another. The idea of cumulative data leads inevitably to the issue of segmentation size. In general, the LSMs can be segmented based on time intervals, or number of samples. The

problem with the first method is that the number of strikes for different time intervals are dissimilar, which may lead to unreliable PDF estimations. Alternatively, since segmentation based on the number of strikes resolves this problem and increases the PDF estimation accuracy, this method is selected. Since the computation of the RS is based on the entropy and probability, the spatial CID leads to the convergence of the RS fractal dimensions as well. 2.2. The Rnyi fractal dimension spectrum for planar coordinates The RS is a very powerful approach toward detection and characterization of multifractal objects (Kinsner 2003). This method investigates the generalized entropy of the object at multiple scales using statistical moments. If these entropies have a power law relationship in multiple scales, the object is modeled as a multifractal and can be characterized using its fractal dimensions. The spectrum of Rnyi fractal dimensions, Dq , is given by (Kinsner 2003)

corresponding Dq is the slope of the line fitted to the log-log plot of the scales versus the entropies of that moment, as shown in Figure 2. In order to calculate the RS for a given object, the maximum size of the height (latitude) and the width (longitude) of the object are called RLat and RLon , respectively. For

10 q 10 , square shaped grids with a vel

each

moment

order

in

the

range

size of rk = R 2 k on a side are generated to cover the object, where R = max( RLat , RLon ) ,

k = 1, 2,K, K ,

and

the

probability

of

intersecting the object with the jth vel is prj . Where the vel side sizes (rk) are less than resolution of the object, the calculated prj s are statistically invalid and do not lead to reliable results. Since the data have location accuracy of 500 m and the minimum longitudinal distance of the map is 646.4754 km, for k = 10, rk = 631.3 m, and consequently, for the computations K = 10 is chosen. 2.3. The Rnyi fractal dimension spectrum for spherical coordinates

Dq = lim
r 0

Hq log(1 / r )

(2)

where H q is the Rnyi entropy and is given by

Hq =

Nr 1 q log prj 1 q j =1

(3)

and q is the moment order, N r is the total number of volume elements (vels), each of size of r that covers the object, and prj is the number of strikes in the jth vel of size r to the total number of strikes. Calculating the Dq for

As mentioned in Section 2.2, the RS for the planar coordinates is based on estimating the PDF of the LSMs using equal sized vels. Since the lightning strikes are distributed over a very large area such as Manitoba, curvature of the Earth introduces unequal size and area vels, especially in the very southern and northern parts. Consequently, the computation of the RS for the LSMs in Manitoba in planar coordinates leads to a nonlinear error due to curvature of the Earth.

q , yields the entire bounded range of the RS. In practice, according to the limited computational resolution and ranges of number representations, the RS is calculated mostly for 10 q 10 .
The Dq s are not necessarily integer, but they are bounded and these upper and lower bounds can be calculated from the minimum and maximum probabilities, respectively (Kinsner 2003). For each moment order q, Figure 2. Log-log plot of the planar Rnyi entropy versus scales for the LSMs in Manitoba for the year 2002.

Where the equatorial and polar diameters of the Earth are 12,756.34 km and 12,713.54 km respectively, the Earth can be modeled as a sphere with a 0.34% relative error. The spherical coordinates and an area restricted to an arbitrary longitude and latitude are shown in Figure 3. The area S in Figure 3 is calculated as

rj =

nrj n
j =1 Nr

(8)
rj

S = r 2 (cos(1 ) cos(2 ))( 2 1 )

The remaining stages for calculating the modified RS are similar to the planar method, except that instead of the regular probabilities, the modified probabilities rj are used. 3. Experimental Results and Discussion In this section, the implementation details of the experiments designed in Section 2 are described. 3.1. Data Generating the LSMs provides suitable illustration of the spatial behavior of the lightning strike densities over time. In addition, prediction and modeling rely on the concept of these maps. For generating the time-space accumulated map of Figure 1, the entire area of the lightning strikes for Manitoba has been divided into cells of equal longitude and latitude. For each cell, the area and the number of strikes/area/year are calculated. Due to the limited range of gray scale in human visual perception, each count is quantized to 8 bits (256 levels) from the maximum of the number of strikes/cell/year. White squares represent the lowest number of strikes per area, while black squares show the highest number of strikes. The lightning strikes considered in this paper occur in a range from

(4)

= r ( )(cos(1 ) cos(2 ))
2

where r is the radius of the Earth. Since r2 becomes a constant, (4) indicates that S has a linear relationship with , and through cos , a nonlinear relationship with . The term causes a nonlinear relationship between the area and the latitude, and consequently introduces unequal sized vels in the computation of the RS. In order to cancel this effect, the prj s in (3) should be calculated for the density of the object, instead of the object itself. Actually, instead of using equal sized vels, the exact area of each vel in scale r for the spherical coordinates is calculated ( srj ) and normalized number of strikes/vel area/year ( nrj ) is considered as the probability density

(cos(1 ) cos(2 ))

nrj =

nrj s rj

(5)

where in the scale r, nrj and srj are the number of strikes and the vel area of the jth vel, respectively. For the scale r, the total map area S is spanned over N r vels, each of area

srj , such that

s
j =1

Nr

rj

=S

(6)

Since the total number of strikes in all the vels of the scale r is constant

n
j =1

Nr

rj

=N

(7) Figure 3. An area restricted to arbitrary longitudes and latitudes in the spherical coordinates.

Now, the modified probability densities ( rj ) can be defined as

-102 to -91 degrees longitude, and extend in latitude from 48.4504 to 58.0055 degrees, for the years 1998 to 2004. 3.2. Convergence in distribution In order to explore the CID for the LSMs, the PDF estimation method which is described for calculating the RS in planar coordinates is utilized. The inconvenience that happens is that for each time period, the maxima of the longitudes and latitudes are different and by keeping the number of vels as a constant, the size of vels changes, and introduces an inconsistency to the computations. Therefore, for resolving this problem, the maxima and minima of the longitudes and latitudes of the entire data for the years 1998 to 2004 are found and used to define the boundary for the LSMs. This boundary has the size of RLon in longitude and RLat in latitude, and if it is preserved for all sets of data, the boundary of the vels remains consistent and the results are comparable as well. After setting the boundary, the map is segmented into grids of size r r, which yields vels of the size (RLon/r) (RLat/r) Rad2. The next stage is the selection of the probability estimation method. As mentioned in Section 1, for the first stage of this work the density and consequently number of strikes is the important factor. Thus, the applied PDF estimation methods are based on the number of strikes. In general, PDF can be estimated using two methods; in the first one, a time window is selected and displaced over time (with or without overlapping), and for each vel the number of strikes within the time window is calculated, and the ratio of this number to the total number of strikes over entire map, within the time window yields the probability for that vel. The shortcoming of this method is that the nonuniform number of lightning strikes over time introduce periods which do not have enough samples to provide statistically reliable results. In order to overcome this problem, the second method which is based on variable time windows and equal number of samples is used. In this method, the entire data is segmented into M time intervals with equal number of samples and for each, PDF can be estimated. For this work, N = 6,166,334, where N is the entire number of strikes, and M = 30, which provides 200,000 samples per time

interval. As mentioned in Section 2.1, the CID is of interest, and thus, PDF for cumulative time segments are calculated and compared. The applied method of PDF estimation is the same that is described for the computation of the probabilities for the modified RS (Section 2.3), and the map is segmented into grids of size r r , where r increases as a power of 2 in the following range: r = 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and 512. For each accumulation m, the PDF for different scales r is calculated ( pr , m ), and mean, , and standard deviation, , of the absolute value of the difference between consequent accumulations are calculated.

( p r ,m ) = E p r ,m +1 p r ,m
( pr ,m ) =
E[( pr ,m +1 pr ,m ) ] ( pr ,m ) 2
2

(9) (10)

where E is the expectation,

pr , m is the

probability matrix of the scale r for the cumulative segment m, m = 1, 2, . . . ,M 1, and M = 30. Figure 4 shows the mean ( pr ) and standard deviation ( pr ) of the absolute value of the difference between consequent cumulative probability distribution functions for r = 16, 128, and 512. It indicates that for all the scales, incrementing the cumulative segments and providing more data for the PDF estimation causes a decrement in mean and standard deviation. Additionally, ( pr ) and

( pr ) and thus, the spatial distribution of the

lightning strikes are in the region of convergence. Higher resolution for the PDF estimation (larger r), increases the difference between the mean and standard deviation, and decreases the amplitude of ( pr ) and ( pr ) as well. As Figure 4 indicates, the convergence rate for mean and standard deviation for all the scales is very similar. 3.3. The Rnyi Fractal Dimension Spectrum as a Characterizer As mentioned in the previous sections, the PDF estimation is a very powerful technique for exploring the LSMs, and for any scale r, it provides an r r probability matrix, which is a large amount of information for processing. Since these matrices must be used for

Figure 4. Mean and standard deviation of the absolute value of the differential probabilities of the cumulative segments for the scales: (a) r = 16, (b) r = 128. Mean and standard deviation of the original and permuted data are shown as ( pr ) , ( pr ) , p ( pr ) , and p ( pr ) , respectively. characterization, the selected techniques must have the following attributes: should be practical, should provide meaningful and physics-based features, should reduce the dimensions, and should consider the data in multiple scales. As shown by Faghfouri et al. (2004a, 2004b), multifractals are appropriate models and characterizers for the LSMs. The RS, which is based on the PDF estimation in multiple scales is a very powerful technique for characterization of the multifractals, and it is

very important to estimate the PDF correctly. As it was mentioned in Section 2.3, the curvature of the Earth can cause very large errors in the PDF estimation. Figures 1 and 5 show the density of the LSM in Manitoba for the year 2002, calculated based on excluding and including the curvature of the Earth. As these figures indicate, excluding the curvature of the Earth introduces a 70% error (maximum of 17 compared to 29 strikes/km2/year) in computations. Other consequences of excluding the curvature of the Earth are described in Faghfouri et al. (2005). The data of the entire lightning strikes for the years 1998 to 2004 are used and in each accumulation, the data of each year is added to the data of the previous years and the RS is applied to each accumulated yearly data (Figure 6). As Figure 6 indicates, the structures of the LSMs for all years are multifractal. The minima of the fractal dimensions for the q > 0 are 1.66 and 1.77, and the maxima for the q < 0 are 2.07 and 2.34, respectively. For 2D objects, the maximum fractal dimension can be 2, and the results of Figure 6 show numbers as large as 2.34. However, it should be noted that by including the curvature of the Earth in the computations, the embedding dimension and thus the maximum possible fractal dimension increase to 3 and, consequently, the results are within the correct range. Additionally, Figure 6 implies that incrementing the cumulative data, increases the dimension of the spectrum. The largest difference in the spectra is between the years 1998 (898,231 data samples), and cumulative data of the 19981999 (1,891,774 data samples), where the number of samples is almost doubled (from 898,231 to 1,891,774). In another experiment, the method that is described in Section 2.3 is applied to the same 30 cumulative segments that are described in Section 3.2. The results are shown in Figure 7 and support what is observed in Figure 7. The information that is shown in Figure 7a can be presented as Figure 7b. For all the moment orders q, larger data accumulation increases the fractal dimensions Dq . The rate of increase in dimensions for smaller cumulations is high and over time, the fractal dimensions seem to converge to certain numbers, which corresponds to the CID of the LSMs that was discussed in Section 3.3. In Figure 7b, there

are two interesting areas which show sudden bursts in multifractal dimensions in A and B, 11th and 18th cumulative segments, or July 2000, and August 2001, respectively. A comparison of the Figure 7 with Figure 8 provides very interesting similarities and confirmations. Figure 8 indicates that JuneJuly 2000 has a very fast increment in the number of strikes compared to the previous years and this means higher than regular lightning activities within that month, that is reflected as a burst in the multifractal

Figure 5. The lightning strike maps in Manitoba for the years: (a) 2001, (b) 2002, (c) 2003.

Figure 6. The Rnyi fractal dimension spectra for the cumulative yearly intervals 1998 to 2004.

Figure 7. (a) The Rnyi fractal dimension spectra for the cumulative segments m = 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, (b) The Rnyi fractal dimensions for the cumulative segments, (c) The absolute value of the difference between the Rnyi fractal dimensions for the consecutive cumulative segments.

dimension of Figure 7. Additionally, Figure 8 shows that July-August 2001 is different than the other years; it is the only year that as monotonic increment in the number of lightning strikes between July and August, in contrast with the other years that decline in the same period. Figure 7b implies, over time, the burst (area A) reduces and diminishes. In order to investigate the effect of the CID in the convergence of the fractal dimensions, the difference ( ( Dq ) ) is defined as
{m}
{ { { ( Dq m} ) = Dq m +1} Dq m}

(11)

{m where ( Dq } ) is the absolute value of the

difference between fractal dimensions of the consecutive cumulative segments, and q and m are the moment order for the RS and cumulative segment, respectively. The results are shown in Figure 7c. As this figure shows, for all the moment orders q, and all cumulative segments, the dimensions are converging to zero. There is a considerable spike in the 18th cumulative segment, which corresponds with the area A, however, this spike diminishes over time as well. As the two previous experiments indicate, the RS is a very appropriate method for characterizing the LSMs. It provides characteristics which have much lower feature dimensions (21 for 10 q 10 ) comparing to the probability matrices of the size r r (262,144 for r = 512). Additionally, the RS reflects the specifications of the LSMs, such as CID and irregular activities. Therefore, the RS is a very appropriate substitute for the large probability matrices of the LSMs. 4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS This work is focusing on characterization as a necessary stage for modeling, simulation, and prediction. The important aim of characterization is finding consistent patterns in the data which can be used for comparison of the simulated results to the physical data. The distributions of the lightning strike data over time and space are stochastic, nonlinear, and time varying. Thus, statistical methods are more appropriate for analysis of such data. Additionally, none of the usual statistical simplifications and distributions can be used for the LSMs analysis or characterization. Under such circumstances, studying the convergence of the PDFs or cumulative

distribution functions (CDFs) is a proper way of finding patterns and exploring consistency. As the results indicate, spatial PDFs change over time and do not imply any sign of convergence in probability. However, the spatial distribution of the lightning strikes in Manitoba for the period 1998 to 2004 indicates the statistical convergence in distribution. Statistically, acquiring enough data samples leads to a convergence in distribution ultimately. However, the question is how many data samples are enough for such a convergence. The only way of answering this question is investigating the rate of convergence and our results indicate that given the data of 7 years, this convergence is observable. Given enough time and data, the convergence in distribution for other regions of the world is anticipated as well. However, the rate of convergence in distribution may vary from one region to another, and it may depend on factors such as terrain, height, temperature, humidity, latitude, longitude, water resources, type of ground, and botanical texture. The multiscale analysis provides a better insight into the nature of the lightning strikes and implies a multifractal behavior, regardless of time and location. The RS proves to be a proper, sensitive, and concise characterizer for the LSMs. Additionally, this multifractality indicates that modeling of these phenomena must satisfy their stochastic and multifractal nature, for which, authors suggest models such as percolation or cellular automata. Due to the small number of yearly observations (7 years), the prediction accuracy over short time windows is very limited.

Figure 8. The number of lightning strikes per month for Manitoba during the period 1998 to 2004.

5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We wish to thank Environment Canada for their generous permission to use Canadian Lightning Detection Network data and software. Financial support from Manitoba Hydro and the National Sciences and Engineering Council (NSERC) of Canada are acknowledged gratefully. 6. REFERENCES Cannons J. and W. Kinsner, 1999,: modeling of lightning discharge patterns as observed from space. 12th Int. Conf. on Math. and Comp. modeling, Chicago, IL. Faghfouri, A, W. Kinsner, and D. Swatek, 2004a,: Multifractal spectra of lightning strike maps using entropy and wavelet analyses. Proc. IEEE Canada Conf. on Elec. and Comp. Eng., CCECE04. Niagara Falls, Ontario, 3, 1437-1440. Faghfouri, A, W. Kinsner, and D. Swatek, 2004b,: Multifractal characterization and fuzzy classification of lightning strike maps. Proc. Conf. of The North Amer. Fuzzy Inf. Processing Soc., 2, 658-663. Faghfouri A., W. Kinsner, and D. Swatek, 2005,: Comparison of Entropy-Based Characterization of Lightning Strike maps Using Planar and Spherical Coordinates. IEEE Canada. Conf. on Elec. and Comp. Eng., 1, 1904-1908. Global Atmospherics, 1999,: Fault Analysis and Lightning Location System, Users Guide, Tucson, AZ, USA: Doc. No.:40144, Rev. 9910; Prod. Ver. 3.0. Kinsner W., 2003,: Fractal and Chaos in Engineering, Course Notes, Dept. of Elec. and Comp. Eng., University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada. Petrov N.I. and F. DAlessandro, 2002,: Verification of lightning strike incidence as a Poisson process. J. Atmos. Terr. Phys., 64, 15, 1645-1650. Peitgen, H., H. Jrgens and D. Saupe, 1992,: Chaos and Fractals: New Frontiers of Science. Springer-Verlag, 984.