Mitch is a computational quantitative geographer and an applied computer scientist, with over 35 years experience of conducting academic research and delivering higher education teaching at UK Universities. His primary research interests lay in the fields of spatial analysis, geoinformatics, and applied computational geography. Much of his research has been undertaken under the following broad themes:

• Geographical accessibility and spatial inequality
• Dasymetric mapping, dasymetric areal interpolation,
    and its applications to small-area population estimation
• Software engineering solutions for applied geography

Mitch was awarded his first degree in Physical Geography and Geology. He went on to complete a Ph.D. that was focused on software development. Undertaken in the early days of digital image processing, he developed FORTRAN code to apply machine vision techniques and statistical classification tools to the identification of pollen grains viewed under a scanning electron microscope. This remains pioneering work in the burgeoning field of automated Palynology.

His research career reflects his long standing interests in both geography and computing and published works to date address the development and application of spatial technologies and spatial analyses to a wide range of social and environmental issues and concerns. This includes significant methodological advancements in spatial analyses, particularly in the development, promotion and application of dasymetric mapping and dasymetric areal interpolation techniques. More recently, his research has focussed on applied spatial accessibility modelling and its application to a range of services such as primary healthcare, public transport, childcare services and care homes. Once again this has included significant methodological advancements, most notably in the development of a solution for multi-modal two-step floating catchment area analyses of the spatial suppy-demand balance.

Mitch is an accomplished programmer and he continues to be actively engaged in software engineering of bespoke solutions to support his research. However, coding in FORTRAN has long since been replaced by C#, JavaScript, SQL, Python, HTML/CSS, R, and a raft of other modern programming languages.

Mitch has accrued an impressive record of research activity, publishing articles across a wide spectrum of international peer-reviewed academic journals, and presenting the outcomes of his work at conferences around the World. He has extensive experience of undertaking consultative projects with Government Agencies and Non-Government Organisations, both nationally and internationally,  including previous secondments to the UN-funded "International Center for Tropical Agriculture" (CIAT) based in Cali, Colombia.

Software Engineering: Current teaching is focussed on the C# Programming language (C#, WinForms, ADO.NET, WPF). Experienced in developing in a range of other programming languages (Python, SQL, PL/pgSQL, HTML/CSS, JavaScript, PHP),  used in support of both research activities and student projects.

Geoinformatics: A long track record in the adoption of spatially enabled object relational databases. Primarily based on PostgreSQL + PostGIS + pgRouting, but with experience also in SQLite / SpatiaLite, QGIS, ArcGIS, and various other desktop GIS packages.

Web Mapping: Design and implementation of websites that incorporate maps and other spatial elements. Coding in HTML / CSS / JavaScript / jQuery. Client-side web mapping principles and technologies based on APIs such as GoogleMap, Bing Map, Leaflet, OpenLayers, and Turf.js. Server-side web mapping principles and technologies based on PHP scripting and GeoServer configuration. Also experience in the use of OpenTripPlanner, WMS and WFS data feeds, and GeoJSON & KML data interchange. The implementation of multi-tier server architecture solutions based on a WebServer  + GeoServer + Postgres/PostGIS stack.

Project supervision:
Undergraduate projects. Masters projects.
Ph.D. supervision and Ph.D. Director of Studies

Academic distinctions:

Professor in Spatial Analysis and Geoinformatics

Co-Director, ESRC-Funded Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data (WISERD)
Senedd Research Academic Fellow, 2020
Course Director, MSc. Geographical Information Systems,
The University of Leicester, 1996-2000
Visiting International Scientist, CIAT, Colombia. 1994, 1995, and 1997

Research highlights:

With an international reputation for applied cutting-edge research conducted in the fields of geocomputation, geoinformatics, and spatial analysis, Mitch is proud to have made an outstanding contribution in Geographical Information Science (GIS) and Applied Computing. This includes more than a dozen academic papers with a citation count of over 100, in addition to numerous other achievements.

Mitch is widely recognised as a pioneer of binary dasymetric areal interpolation techniques, the applications of which have since impacted upon studies conducted in environmental analyses, medical geography, urban geography, social science, and geographical information science.

Appearing on The Cartographic Journal "most cited articles of all time" list is "Langford M and Unwin D. (1994) Generating and mapping population density surfaces within a geographical information system" which explores the construction of dasymetric population surfaces. This is one of the earliest publications to identify the potential of dasymetric mapping techniques for enhancing the accuracy of interpolated population counts. 

Other highly cited articles have contributed to knowledge through the development of areal interpolation methodologies, or by introducing methodological innovations in spatial accessibility models and their real-world applications. These include...

Langford M, Higgs G. and Fry R. (2016) Multi-modal Two-Step Floating Catchment Area Analysis of Primary Health Care Accessibility. Health and Place. Introduces novel developments to the Enhanced Two-Step Floating Catchment Area methodology to allow the incoroporation of multiple simulateous transport modes through the spatial network connecting supply and demand points.

Langford M. and Higgs G. (2006) Measuring Potential Access to Primary Healthcare Services: The Influence of Alternative Spatial Representations of Population. This article, in The Professional Geographer, examines how the use of various commony employed spatial data constructs to represent the demand population placed upon services can then affect the outcomes of derived accessbility measures

Langford M, Fry R, and Higgs G. (2012) Measuring transit system accessibility using a modified two-step floating catchment technique. International Journal of Geographical Information Science

Langford M. (2006) Obtaining population estimates in non-census reporting zones: An evaluation of the 3-class dasymetric method. Computers, environment and urban systems.

Fisher, PF. and Langford M. (1996) Modeling sensitivity to accuracy in classified imagery: A study of areal interpolation by dasymetric mapping. The Processional Geographer 

Fisher, PF. and Langford M. (1995) Modelling the errors in areal interpolation between zonal systems by Monte Carlo simulation. Environment and planning A.