Prof Gordon Mitchell

Profile

My work as an environmental geographer (human-environment interaction), focuses on three connected themes: water as hazard (scarcity/demand, pollution/quality, flood); sustainable urbanism; and environmental inequality. My research has been applied in environmental planning, natural resource management and impact appraisal. It often uses spatial analysis and numerical modelling, and occasionally qualitative methods. A particular focus has been water – resources and quality/pollution, but I also work on air quality, energy/carbon, natural hazards, and ecosystem services, and multi-disciplinary work, such as sustainability appraisal of spatial plans. These interests are fundamentally about efficiency – reducing environmental impacts of development, but I also have a long standing interest in equity, examining how the environmental risks and benefits of development fall differentially on people. My work has been supported by c. £13.5 M via UK research councils (EPSRC, ESRC, NERC), the EU, national government/ agencies (DEFRA, Scottish Executive, Environment Agency, SEPA), and industry (water utilities and environmental consultancies).

2024– Professor of Environmental Geography
2015-2024 Associate Professor, Geography (Dir Masters Education, Director Int. 2017-22)
2006-2015 Lecturer, Geography/Transport Studies (Assessment Lead 2013-16)
2001-2005 Adv. Research Fellow, Geography/Transport Studies
1994-2001 Senior/Research Fellow, Civil Eng., Environment Centre & Geography
1993-1994 Career break / travel
1992-1993 Manager, Environment Centre (became School of Earth & Environment)
1987-1992 Research Assistant, Geography
1984-1985 Marine toxicologist, Shell UK Ltd

Research interests

Water as hazard Early work investigating dissolved organic carbon in upland runoff, informed research where I ‘came down the catchment’ to address urban surface water quality. This urban-diffuse pollution loading research led to a government advisory position, adoption of a pollutant loading database in industry (CIRIA) guidance on sustainable urban drainage design, GIS-model application for utilities and in the pioneering UK ‘source apportionment’ industry-government-academia collaboration that led to industry standard tools for diagnosing water quality failures in rivers. Natural England also incorporated this work into national guidance on the Nutrient Neutrality policy, enabling housing developers to calculate the nutrient offset needed to protect ecosystems they put at risk of nutrient enrichment. On urban drainage, I have also worked with international groups addressing Blue-Green Infrastructure in China, flood risk in Asian Delta cities, and flood risk from cyclones. I co-led a water@leeds RHS Chelsea Flower Show gold-medal winning entry, demonstrating how gardeners can reduce flood risk using SuDS.

Research on water scarcity addresses water use and conservation. Water utilities have used my non-domestic water demand model enabling them to meet statutory water resource planning obligations, whilst analysis of non-domestic metering ‘big-data’ for market regulator MOSL has informed their water efficiency drive. I have also worked on water ‘backcasting’ in the Arabian Gulf region and am exploring how water tariffs can be revised to reduce demand whilst avoiding impacts on low income households.

Sustainable cities My work has extended beyond water to examine the sustainability of cities and regions. Work on urban transport-air quality, conducted with local authorities, informed choice of road-user charging strategy, and pioneered environmental-equity appraisal of transport planning (now routine in the UK). Work has examined UK spatial economic restructuring under fuel-price rises, and the geographical inequalities that arise. My PICABUE methodology for constructing indicators of sustainable development has been applied across diverse fields (planning, construction, agriculture, manufacturing), and has been used as a participatory self-assessment tool to gauge understanding of sustainability. I was a member of the EU BEQUEST consortium, producing the first toolkit on urban sustainability evaluation and decision-making. Over three major projects (EPSRC Outcast, Solutions and Revisions consortia, with Echenique of the Martin Centre, Cambridge) I led an appraisal team drawing on land-use transport modelling, to explore question of sustainable urban form. The conclusion that compaction generates only a modest reduction in energy use, informed planning policy in the UK and sparked significant debate internationally.

Environmental inequality I seek to understand how environmental and climate risks are distributed socially, and how the most vulnerable can be protected. I led the world’s first small-area national ‘environmental justice’ air quality analysis and subsequently extended this to produce the first longitudinal analyses, revealing that ‘a rising tide does not lift all boats’. This evidence was influential on air quality management for public health in the UK. With Gordon Walker the UK environmental inequality evidence base was extended to add industrial hazard and flood risk, leading the Environment Agency to weight flood protection investment towards deprived communities. Further environmental inequality projects were conducted for the Scottish Executive, Treasury, Natural England, NGO Friends of the Earth, and with colleagues in China (pollution), Oman (flooding), and Nigeria (ecosystem services). My 2023 work for the Environment Agency, ‘mainstreaming environmental justice’, is informing the strategic mission of the Agency and our current industry collaboration on a multiple environmental deprivation index, for use in environmental and climate justice policy/planning and health research.

PhD Students - Current

• Tamba Komba (with Joe Holden). Urban water resilience in Freetown, Sierra Leone
• Guoyu Chen (with Radhika Borde and Asa Roast). Red coral in China
• Molly McKenzie (with Martin Tillotson). Multi-scale planning for sustainable urban drainage retrofit

PhD Students - Completed

• Mohamed Nasef (with Jon Lovett). Bridging the water deficit in Egypt
• Hamad Alazmi (with Mark Trigg). Water scarcity in Kuwait: a backcasting approach
• Karen Mullin (with Ruth Waters, Natural England). The social distribution of ecosystem services in England
• Tariq al Rasbi (with Jon Lovett). Vulnerability to natural hazard in Oman
• Suad Suad Bashir Al Manji (with Jon Lovett). Resilience to natural hazard in Oman
• Alice Owen. Green technology diffusion and adoption.
• Faith Chan (with Adrian McDonald). Sustainability Appraisal of flood risk management strategies: the case of the Pearl River Delta, China.
• Olalaken Adekola (with Alan Grainger). Valuation and social distribution of wetland ecosystem services in the Niger Delta
• Paula Micou (with Adrian McDonald). Strategies to meet water demand targets of Code for Sustainable building
• Jing Ma (with Alison Heppenstall). Microsimulation of personal travel carbon emission in Beijing in response to urban design
• Baoyin Liu (with Yim Ling Siu). Developing a multi-hazard risk appraisal model with reference to the Yangtze river delta, China.
• Eran Sadek (with Linda See). Microsimulation of Domestic Water Demand incorporating expressed behaviour

I have acted as an expert reviewer of research projects, and project and programme proposals, for: Academy of Finland (Development research programme); ANR, the French National Research Agency (natural resource management, urban sustainability); Austrian Science Foundation (sustainability appraisal); Fondazione Cariplo, Lombardy, Italy (air quality); Leverhulme trust (sustainable drainage); Netherlands Council for Earth &Life Sciences, Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) (flood risk programmes; Polar natural resource programme); Portugese Foundation for Science and Technology - FCT (air quality); Public Health England (air quality); Swedish Research Council (programem on Sustainability in the Built Environment); UK Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs - DEFRA (urban diffuse pollution, air quality); UK NERC (panel member, Environmental hazards & infrastructure programme; UK droughts & water scarcity programme; KT programme); UK ESRC (environmental assessment); UK ESR-NERC-BBSRC rural economy and land use programme (RELU); UK EPSRC (sustainable drainage). I have also acted as a peer reviewer for 50+ ISI journals, plus books, book chapters and book proposals.

• Complex Value Optimisation for Resource Recovery from Waste (C-VORR)
• Geospatial restructuring of industrial trade (GRIT): integration of secondary data to model geospatial economic responses to fuel price

Qualifications

• PhD Catchment dynamics
• BSc Environmental Science
• City and Guilds IT for Business

Professional memberships

• Chartered Environmentalist C.Env
• Full Member, Institute of Sustainability and Environmental Professionals (MISEP

Student education

I teach an MSc module on Environmental Assessment (GEOG5830) that addresses a range of appraisal techniques (e.g. EIA, SEA, environmental risk, multi-criterial appraisal, distributive assessment) used in practice, whilst also placing such tools in a wider historical, legal and development decision making context. I also lead a module on Water science and management (GEOG3065) with contributions on sustainable drainage and water resource planning and lead a further module on Urban growth and Sustainability (GEOG3050), that includes a week long field trip to the Helsinki metropolitan region, Finland. I act as a small group tutor and mentor of dissertation students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. As Director of Masters Education, I led development of a new online distance learning programme in Geographic Information Science.

Research groups and institutes

• Institute for Spatial Data Science

Current postgraduate researchers

• Arif Rohman