Commerce trade and industry, national and local institutions, and the private household as well depend to an ever increasing extent on electronic equipment and information technology systems.

Failures of such highly sensitive systems are frequently caused by electrostatic discharges, switching overvoltages or overvoltages due to lightning strikes. Damage caused, in particular, by thunderstorm overvoltages have shown in the past years that electronic systems are at risk through electromagnetic fields and line-fed overvoltages at a distance of up to 1.5km from the point of the lightning strike.

However, the current state of technology does permit effective protection of systems against the effects of lightning strikes and overvoltages.

In the past years, this knowledge has led to the establishment of international lightning protection standards IEC 1024-1 "Protection of Structures against Lightning" and IEC 1312-1 "Protection against LEMP". Parts of these international standards are also provided as European Draft Standards and will be integrated into the VDE standards shortly:

ENV 61024-1
"Protection of Structures against Lightning Part 1: General Principles"
DIN V ENV 61024-1 (VDE V 0185 Part 100)
"Gebäudeblitzschultz, Allgemeine Grundsätze"

E DIN VDE 0185 Part 102
"Gebäudeblitzschultz, Allgemeine Grundsätze, Anwendungsrichtlinie"

IEC 1312-1
"Protection against Lightning Electromagnetic Impulse Part 1: General Principles"

DIN IEC 1312-1 (VDE 0185 Part 103)
"Schultz gegen den elektromagnetischen Blitzimpuls (LEMP)
Teil 1: Allgemeine Grunsätze"