[tz] US osm timezone

[Lester Caine]

Derick Rethans wrote:
> On Fri, 6 Sep 2013, Guy Harris wrote:
>
>>
>> On Sep 6, 2013, at 2:06 PM, Lester Caine <lester at lsces.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/Zf
>>> Will take a couple of minutes then ask about large data set.
>>>
>>> OK US timezone areas need a bit of a tidyup which was why this was
>>> taking so long :( I'd certainly be looking to clean up all the
>>> little areas back to the bigger boundaries if that is possible, and
>>> adding the missing zones ... But THAT is the whole point, we can
>>> simply edit this data ourselves.
>>
>> Or we could add the actual tzdb zone bounaries to OSM as relations.
>> Querying *that* probably won't take as long.
>
> We actually have discussed that before, but TZDB boundaries do not
> really belong in OpenStreetMap. It is something that is very difficult
> to indepedently survey on the ground! I would probably suggest to keep a
> separate resource that links a TZDB ID to a (list of) OSM boundary
> relations. With the help of the shapefiles at
> http://efele.net/maps/tz/world/ that should be doable.

I've got a mashup which is a clone of the mapit code and designed to handle area 
material. I'm just looking at how the local database is populated from OSM, for 
particular areas, and the timezone tag is already present in OSM and on the 
whole accurate. The OSM data also returns administrative areas which may be 
suitable to record changes to tz coverage over time and that will be my next 
point of interest.

My own plan is a web service that returns a timezone for a location and can also 
return the history of that location back in time. As well as obviously giving a 
calendar of time changes. Even if only for my private use ...

Tidying this information within OSM is a discussion for the OSM list.

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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