[tz] How Time Zones Are Coordinated

Brian Inglis Brian.Inglis at Shaw.ca
Tue Mar 14 15:54:14 UTC 2023


On 2023-03-14 07:04, Kim Davies via tz wrote:
> Yesterday we posted a short article that gives a primer on this project:
> 
> https://www.icann.org/en/blogs/details/how-time-zones-are-coordinated-13-03-2023-en
> 
> It is also being circulated to attendees to our major conference being held in 
> Mexico this week. An objective in posting this is to better raise awareness with 
> policy makers to plan time zone rule changes well in advance so that changes can 
> be thoroughly disseminated. There are many government representatives from 
> around the world at this Mexico meeting so hopefully this can contribute to 
> spreading the word.

It would also be useful to link this to required notifications of time zone 
changes to IATA to update country information and local scheduled flight arrival 
and departure times in SSIM, and the fines IATA levies for late notices: $8M for 
Egypt in 2016.
Plus $2M in known business losses as a result of clocks being wrong and 
schedules and deadlines being missed.

For airlines, if any crew misses a flight because of clock issues, that or a 
later flight is cancelled, as there are limited standbys.
If business passengers miss flights, planes fly empty or become overbooked, so 
some airlines lose and others gain $ks of business per flight.

Electrical utilities need to know when people and businesses are preparing for 
and doing work to schedule generation, balance load, and reduce prices: last 
minute changes costs money to satisfy: can be extra $ks/MWh.
Gas utilities need to nominate space on pipelines by daily deadlines or their 
supplies do not get to market to meet contracts, penalties are incurred, some 
companies lose money, other have equally large windfalls: can be $10Ms/day; some 
people get extremely stressed then lose their jobs, others get huge bonuses!

Transit, shipping, and all modes of traffic get messed up because people and 
goods are not travelling, available, or moving when expected, with costs and 
consequences.

Posters with experiences in other industries can add their own horror stories 
relating to time and missed schedules!

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis              Calgary, Alberta, Canada

La perfection est atteinte                   Perfection is achieved
non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter  not when there is no more to add
mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retirer     but when there is no more to cut
                                 -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry


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