Estimating telecommunication equipment failures due to lightning surges by using population density

Lightning damage to telecommunication infrastructures will become more serious with global warming because of the increased occurrence of lightning. To estimate the lightning damage to telecommunication equipment in the medium and long term, we have developed an estimation model that uses resident population, which we can calculate from highly reliable predicted demographic shifts in the future. We applied our model to three areas with different resident population densities by using statistical data on lightning strikes and resident population. The results demonstrated that our model could accurately estimate lightning damage in all the areas.