Dr Andy Newing

Profile

I am an Associate Professor in Applied Spatial Analysis based in the Institute for Spatial Data Science (ISDS). I have broad research interests which are currently focused on:

1. Retail location planning with particular expertise related to the UK grocery sector and geographical aspects of e-commerce/online groceries.
2. Access to public and private services including healthcare, retail banking and food retailing.
3. Retail change, including the changing composition of retail centres and the changing location strategy of major retailers.
4. Novel proxies for neighbourhood composition, housing type and local tourism activity derived from consumer data. 

Responsibilities

• Deputy Head of School (6-month cover for Deirdre Conlon)

Research interests

I carry out applied high impact research in collaboration with commercial and public sector organisations. Research interests include spatial and quantitative analysis for retail location planning and analytics, consumer data analysis, access to services, census/neighbourhood analysis, geodemographics, transport and urban planning.

For an overview of my collaboration with the Property Analytics function at major grocery retailer, Sainsbury’s, see Sainsbury’s Property Analytics. For a summary of some of my work in relation to the geography of groceries e-commerce, please see this article in the Conversation.

I was co-investigator on an ESRC funded Secondary Data Analysis Initiative (SDAI) project titled ‘WatPop: Understanding seasonal population change’, inferring small area seasonal population change using water metering data, summarised here and reported fully here.

I was co-investigator on the ESRC Funded Understanding and enhancing the community value of traditional retail markets project which generated a number of policy-focused outputs including a policy briefing which highlighted the importance of Newcastle’s Grainger Market as an affordable source of food and drink.

I led research capturing the presence of ‘e-food deserts’, a novel measure of neighbourhoods with poor access to grocery retail incorporating indicators of groceries e-commerce home delivery availability. Outputs from that work, including a national ‘e-food desert index’ are available here, and can be visualised on the initeractive map available here, with supporting narrative at: CDRC analysis uncovers new rural e-food deserts. They also feature as part of the Trust for London ‘London’s Poverty Profile’ and are a major input to the ‘Priority Places for Food Index’ co-produced by CDRC and Which? and a key part of the Which? ‘Affordable food for all’ campaign.

Recent work capturing geographical accessibility of Community Pharmacies is summarised here and used within research published by Which?

PhD Student supervision

• Lena Kilian (Data Analytics and Society Centre for Doctoral Training - Cohort 2): Spatial energy footprints. See this report for an example of policy relevant outputs from Lena’s PhD. Lena won the Outstanding Research Design and Methods 2022 prize in the inaugural PGR Paper Awards held by Energy Geographies Research Group, Royal Geographical Society. Read her winning paper, ‘Effective mitigation of transport emissions in London neighbourhoods: spatial patterns, social factors and wellbeing'. Now working in academia.
• Kim Butterfield (White Rose Doctoral Training Centre): Individual level models for retail location analytics. Now working in retail analytics in the commercial sector.
• Ryan Urquhart (Data Analytics and Society Centre for Doctoral Training - Cohort 1): E-commerce in retail location modelling. Now working in academia.
• Zi Ye (China Scholarship Council): Tourist retail behaviours derived from location based social media data. Now working in academia.
• Amanda Otley (White Rose Doctoral Training Centre): City Specific Geodemographics. *Awarded best poster presentation at the 26th Annual GIScience Research UK (GISRUK) conference, University of Leicester, 17th-20th April 2018*. Now working in industry.

I have supervised or co-supervised a number of Data Scientists working as part of the LIDA Data Scientist Development Programme, these include:

• Tamara Garda Del Toro (2022-23) (co-supervised with Gordon Mitchell) who is undertaking work with MOSL and Yorkshire Water related to benchmarking and segmenting businesses based on threir high temporal resolution water consumption
• Owen Hibbert (2022-23) who supported the WatPop project, working specifically with high temporal resolution water metering data at the individual household level.
• Jacob Van Alwon (2021-22) who also supported the WatPop project, working closely with the ONS on assessing the feasibility of deriving property occupancy trends from water metering data.
• James Hulse (2021-22) (co-supervised with Gordon Mitchell) who also worked with MOSL and Yorkshire Water in relation to consumption and benchmarking in the non-household sector.
• Tom Albone (2021-2021) (co-supervised by Michelle Morris) who undertook research into the food environment in Holme Wood, Bradford, producing outputs which include this interactive community toolkit.
• Jack Lewis (2018) and Francisco Videira (2019-2020) who both worked on research related to ‘e-food desers’ (see above).

My work is regularly presented at academic conferences and industry events, recent presentations include:

• ‘Could online groceries and branded convenience stores help alleviate contemporary food deserts’. Webinar delivered for the Global Food and Environment Institute (GFEI), University of Leeds, 30th April 2025. https://youtu.be/ujcqUzjHWVk?si=QO6eNBgYxSuOFMEp
• ‘Access to healthy and affordable food in rural areas - the role of online groceries and branded convenience stores’. Presentation delivered at GISRUK 2025, University of Bristol, 24th April 2025.
• ‘Is poor access to primary care a driver of avoidable ambulance call outs?’. Presentation delivered at the AAG Annual Conference, Detroit, 27th March 2025.
• ‘Logistics in groceries e-commerce and location planning’. Session delivered at the Urban Logistics Summer School, University of Antwerp, 25^th August 2023.
• ‘Inferring dwelling occupancy patterns from high temporal resolution water metering data’. Presentation (delivered by Owen Hibbert) at the AAG Annual Meeting, Denver, 23^rd – 28^th April 2023.

A full list of presentations from conferences and industry events can be viewed here.

I am keen to hear from prospective Research Students who have proposed research that falls within my interests and expertise. Currently I would be particularly interested in projects that fall within the following themes:

• Access to services (specifically retail banking, primary care, food retailing and libraries) within a UK context.
• Retail change from a geographical perspective including the changing retail mix and composition within retail centres and the changing location and channel strategy of major retailers.
• Retail location planning and analytics, especially projects that seek to model both in-store and online retailing, or which apply novel methodological approaches (e.g. E2SFCAM, ABMs, AI etc.).
• Development of proxies for neighbourhood composition or household change using novel data sources (such as those derived from transactional consumer data).
• The impact of second homes/holiday homes/tourist accommodation on local service provision – especially closures of essential services (schools, hospitals etc.) as a result of high rates vacant/seasonally occupied dwellings.
• The geography of food ‘delivery’ – including inequalities in coverage, availability of cost of online food ordering and delivery systems, particularly in a UK and European context.
• The grography of ageing, retirement migration and related provision of/access to services.

• Understanding and Enhancing the Community Value of Traditional Retail Markets in UK Cities
• WatPop: understanding seasonal population change - Spatiotemporal population research utilising water meter data

Qualifications

• PhD, Human Geography
• MSc, Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis
• PGCE, Secondary Geography
• BA, Geography

Professional memberships

• Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society with IBG
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA)
• Regional Science Association - British and Irish Section (RSAI-BIS)

Student education

Between 2014 and 2023 I led the School of Geography contributions to the MSc in Consumer Analytics and Marketing Strategy (CAMS) co-delivered with Leeds University Business School.

I contribute to teaching, assessment and student support across our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, with a particular focus on GIS, Service Analysis, Network Analysis and Retail Modelling. I have been nominated a number of times for ‘best mentor’, ‘inspirational teaching/superviror’ and ‘best personal tutor’ in the Leeds University Union Partnership Awards.

I regularly deliver external training courses in GIS, spatial analysis and geographic modelling. These include courses delivered on behalf of the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) and the Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC).

Selected recent student projects supervised include:

• Ilya Ilyankou (2022) Waitrose as a Proxy to Neighbourhood Health and Wealth. Subsequently published and available here.
• Catherine Duffy (2021) Evaluation of the accessibility of Covid-19 vaccination sides in England – Runner up for the Society for Location Analysis Postgraduate Student Award 2021. Subsequently published and available here.
• Alex Fox (2021) Impacts of Covid-19 on the Holland and Barrett store network.
• Christina Botros (2019) A spatial analysis of the Sainsbury’s/ASDA mega-merger within the UK grocery retail sector – Nominated for the RGS-IBG Quantitative Methods Research Group (QMRG) undergraduate dissertation prize
• Amelia Houltby (2019) Could Tesco’s new discount retailer Jack’s address food deserts in England?
• Sam Holmes (2018) Academic Analytics: Informing Falmouth University's marketing strategy with applied spatial analysis - Awarded The Society for Location Analysis Undergraduate Student Award 2018
• Sam Jones (2018) Understanding town centre performance in Wales: Developing a typology for benchmarking. Subsequently published and available here.
• Amanda Otley (2017) Developing an age specific community resiliance index for Leeds (Supported by Leeds City Council via LIDA).
• Jayashree Rangaswammy (2016-17) Use of spatial interaction models for the Fire and Rescue Service: A study in feasibility and application (Supported by Kent Fire and Rescue Service)
• Duncan Clayton-Stead (2016) An analysis of Argos concession store performance (Sponsor: Argos via CDRC)
• Charlotte Sturley (2016) A proof of concept agent-based model of consumer store choice behaviour (co-supervised with Alison Heppenstall) (Supported by a major grocery retailer) - GIScience Research Group of the RGS-IBG Masters Dissertation Award Prize Winner. Subsequently published and available here.
• Rhiannon Thomas (2016) Geodemographic and Spatial Analysis of Leeds City Council's 'Bodyline' Gym and Leisure Centre membership to inform marketing strategy (Supported by Leeds City Council via LIDA)
• Alexander Bland (2015) Identifying fuel and poverty characteristics through e.on consumer records and geo-demographic segmentation data (Sponsor: e.on via CDRC)
• Thomas Berry (2015) Exploring the utility of the 2011 Work Place Statistics to help The Co-op better understand transient new store locations, worker flows and worker demographics (Sponsor: The co-operative foood via CDRC) – ESRC Prize Winner. Subsequently published and available here.

Research groups and institutes

• Institute for Spatial Data Science