European Catalogue of Training Oportunities in Meteorology - ECTOM II

In most European countries the process of integration of education at university level was started after Bologna Declaration with the objective to have the system where students on some level could move to another school, or rather university. The goal is to achieve the compatibility between the systems and levels in individual countries to have no objections for students when transferring between the countries. From this point of view it is useful to provide the information about the possibility of education in different countries in centralised form, with uniform shape and content, but validated on national level. In case of meteorology and climatology this can be reasonably done on the floor of European Meteorological Society, by means of individual National Meteorological Societies and their guidance.

Brief history of the original ECTOM I is presented. Further need of update of the content is discussed with emphasis to several aspects. There are several reasons for such an update of ECTOM 1. Firstly, there are new EMS members which could contribute to the catalogue. Secondly, corrected, new, more precise and expanding information will be available in addition to existing record, particularly in sense of some changes in education systems of EC countries and associated countries approaching the EC following the main goals included in Bologna Declaration. Thirdly, contemporary technology to organize the real database with the possibility of easier navigation and searching of the appropriate information and feasibility to keep them up to date permanently through the WWW should be adopted.

In this presentation, practical information how to find and submit information on access to education or training possibilities in ECTOM II will be given as well. The rules and structure of the information is provided keeping EMS organized database with the philosophy of permanent possibility of information update and maintenance of the data. A few examples are shown.