Dr Victoria Chapman

Victoria and her team create and deliver bespoke weather and climate solutions for the rail industry, with expertise in leaf fall and low adhesion forecasting.

Areas of expertise

  • Weather impacts on the railway industry
  • Weather impacts on agriculture
  • Leaf fall, low adhesion and wind throw forecasts for industry
  • Spatial and statistical analysis
  • Geographical Information Systems
  • Remote Sensing
  • Project and contract management
  • Stakeholder engagement

Publications by Dr Victoria Chapman

Current activities

Victoria manages the Rail Applications team who deliver research and services that help the railway industry better manage the impacts of weather for safe and resilient operations. Victoria leads the scientific strategy for rail consultancy at the Met Office. Her main activities include scientific lead for leaf fall, low adhesion and wind throw research and services. Working in collaboration with industry, she is also working on projects to address the challenge of earthwork failures on the rail network.  Victoria also represents the Met Office on various rail industry working groups.

Career background

Since joining the Met Office in 2007 as a senior scientist, Victoria has delivered a range of weather and climate change consultancy projects for various industries including the agriculture, transport, energy and water industries. She was manager of the Met Office Rural Environment Team between 2010 and 2017, where she led the scientific delivery of various environmental projects with a meteorological or climate input.

Prior to joining the Met Office Victoria worked for an environmental consultancy as a GIS and Business Developer Consultant, delivering a variety of projects for national government, regulatory and corporate clients. Victoria has held several postdoctoral research positions at Birmingham and Oxford University. Projects worked on include assessing snow and light rainfall from space (European Space Agency), modelling railway temperatures to assess railway buckling (RSSB) and mapping West Nile Virus risk in the UK (Defra).

Victoria was awarded her PhD on the assessment of passive microwave rainfall estimates from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) at the University of Birmingham. She holds a Master of Science degree in Applied Meteorology and Climatology with distinction (University of Birmingham) and a 1st Class Honours Degree in Geography and Environmental Science (University of Birmingham).