International Time Zones and Time Zone Data
GIS and Time have more in common than you might think. Did you know that a Canadian Land
surveyor, Sir Sanford Flemming, contributed to the early adoption of the present system of time zones and
is now also know as “Father of Standard Time”. Flemming lived in Halifax (my birthplace!) in the 1880’s
and was engineer-in-chief for construction of the intercolonial railway between the Maritimes and Quebec.
Flemming is also honored with an educational institution named for him,
Sir Sanford Flemming College, which boasts one of the finest GIS programs in Canada. For more details on Sir
Sanford Flemming consult this Paper -
Go There
YEAR 2000 Arrival Times
Here's some information that we derived from
www.worldtime.com. From their data, we've produced a list of World locations which are ordered by
"year-2000-arrival-time". The columns show the country/territory, the city/location, the arrival time,
and its difference in time to Jan 01, 00:00 hours.
First countries to celebrate New Year
Kingdom of Tonga (DST, GMT+14)
Kiribati, Christmas Isl.(GMT+14)
Chatham Island (New Zealand), DST, GMT+13h45m)
Fiji (Suva)(DST, GMT+13)
New Zealand (DST, GMT+13)
Kiribati, Canton & Enderbury Isl.(GMT+13)
Russian Far East(Chukotka,
Anadyr, Uelen, Provideniya)(GMT+12)
Russian Far East(Kamchatka region,
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky)(GMT+12)
Kiribati(GMT+12)
Marshall Islands(GMT+12)
Nauru(GMT+12)
Tuvalu(GMT+12)
Last countries to celebrate New Year
American Samoa(GMT-11)
Western Samoa(GMT-11)
Midway Islands(GMT-11)
Niue(NZ)(GMT-11)
Paper on International Time Zones
F. Pollastri has authored this interesting article which delves into the more technical aspects of International
time zones. The article is brief and to the point. Interestingly, he points out that the time
zones division was officially adopted on 1884 November 1 at the
International Meridian Conference held in Washington D.C. Full Article can be found
Here
The tz database
The public-domain time zone database contains code and data that represent the history of local time for many representative
locations around the globe. It is updated periodically to reflect changes made by political bodies to UTC offsets and daylight-saving rules. This database (often called tz or zoneinfo) is used by several implementations, including BSD, DJGPP,
GNU/Linux, HP-UX, IRIX, Solaris, and UnixWare.Details Here
How about a trip down the Greenwich Meridian?
Find out why Greenwich is home to the Prime Meridian, take a virtual tour
along the meridian, and order a first day cover stamp post marked January 1, 2000 from Greenwich England.
Take the tour Here
Canadian time Zones
Article It's about TIME takes an interesting look at the six Canadian time Zones.
By H. David Matthews and Mary Vincent.
View the Article Here
FREE AND COMMERCIAL TIME ZONE DATA
Time zones from DMTI Spatial Inc. -
DMTI provides free demo download of Canadian Time Zone data, available in SHP, E00, or MapInfo MIF format. Download
registration is required.
Europa Technologies Map Elements - Time Zones
Extracted from the Global Insight and Global
Insight Plus data sets. Complete mapping at 1:1,000,000 scale of the worlds
time zones in the context of an up-to-date political map. Includes offsets
from Universal Time (UTC) and letter designation. Supplement layers include
the International Date Line and a number of useful grids and bands.
Standard Time Zones of the US
Time Zone Boundaries for Use with MapInfo Professional.IntraSearch has created a standard time zone boundary data set
of the
US. The attribute data includes time zone name and a logical statement
indicating participation in daylight savings time. The source of the data is the US Department of
Transportation, Office of the Assistant General Counsel, Regulation and Enforcement (49
CFR Subtitle A, Part 71). The vintage is April, 1984 (the latest vintage
available). The standard time zones are official federal boundaries and
may not reflect local participation in daylight savings time. This data set is available for $95.00.
contact: mplatt@IntraSearch.com.
Stopwatchmaps.com - US Time Zones
Stopwatchmaps has developed a detailed
comercial dataset which can be ordered from thier website. They offer the following description.
Time Zones, and their boundary
lines, are established by Federal
statute. While most of the time zone
division lines fall on county
boundaries, a number do not... the
exceptions fall along township and
section boundaries as defined by the
Public Land Survey System. It is
also true that the beginning and
ending dates for the observance of
Daylight Savings Time are standardly
established by statute... but certain
states and certain counties decline to
observe Daylight Savings Time. This
mapped table records each county of
the U.S. and, where a county is split
by a time zone boundary, each part
of that county separately. For each
of these, the table records the Time
Zone and whether Daylight Savings
Time is observed. Note, you can also download a free demo dataset prior to ordering.
World Time Zones Data Set from ESRI
The World Time Zones data set shows 35 different time
zones around the world and gives a zone's difference in
hours from Greenwich Mean Time. The scale of the
data is approximately 1:3 million. The World Time Zones and World Countries data sets are in ArcView shapefile format.
(The World
Time Zones data set is available in ArcInfo covergage format.) Both data sets are in geographic
coordinates (latitude-longitude) and are compatible with ESRI software in UNIX, PC and Macintosh
environments after extraction from the Windows 95 / NT self-extracting executable. Data can be purchased for $19.95
Free Time Zones of the United States from USGS -
This data set portrays the seven time zones for the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.
Information on Greenwich Mean Time offset and areas in the U.S. where daylight savings time is observed
is also included. To Download Free SHP File Click Here (2 MB).
TIME ZONE MAPS FOR PRINTING OUT
Standard World Time Zone Map
Worldtimezone.com
Time Zone Maps from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection -The University of Texas at Austin
1998 World Time Zones
1995 World Time Zones
Millennium World Time Zone System (24 hour clock) Millenium World Time Zone Map
How about another
world time zone map!
TIME ZONE WEB LINKS
Unofficial, non-authoritative information on world time zones.
Time Service Dept., U.S. Naval Observatory, Washington, DC >>
Go There
View a map of World Time Zones with current local times >>
Go There
Find local times around the world
Select a city and the local time is displayed >>
Go There
Happy New Year to all and Good Luck in the new millenium!
From The GeoCommunity
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