TIME supports a variety of data types:

• Grid
• Time Series
• Point/Line/Polygon
• Node Link Network
• Images

Each data type can be loaded from and saved to a variety of file formats. New file formats can also be added rapidly by advanced users.

File Formats

More information about file formats supported by this application can be found in the Toolkit Data Files guide.

The basic data types, such as Raster, Polygons and Time Series can all be displayed within a powerful visualisation framework.

A statistical library provides access to common summary and comparison statistics on data sets.

A growing suite of pattern analysis tools examine spatial patterns in environmental data.

Most of these capabilities can be explored in the windows based TIME tools, custom applications, such as the Rainfall Runoff Library and web based models.

The development of TIME has focussed on ease of use rather than 'raw power'. While TIME can be applied to significant problems in the field of integrated catchment management, problems which have very large data requirements (>1.5Gb) or large computational demands are not suitable to current versions of TIME. These issues, particular data limits, are being addressed through improved data management tools.

While nothing makes TIME inherently unsuitable for modelling outside of a catchment hydrology domain, there is no specific support provided for modelling paradigms such as agent based modelling. If you are interested in using TIME in a new domain, you are encouraged to contact Geoff Davis (geoff.davis@ewater.org.au).

TIME allows modellers to represent uncertainty in their models, by representing input and output data with a probability distribution about a mean, or most likely value. TIME further supports the visualisation of this information through shaded colour schemes.