Professor Mitch Langford is a computational quantitative geographer who has over 35 years experience of conducting academic research and teaching within UK Universities. His primary research interests fall in the fields of spatial analysis, geoinformatics, and applied computational geography, and has largely been conducted under the following broad themes:

• Geoinformatics, graphical accessibility, and spatial equity
• Dasymetric areal interpolation, dasymetric mapping,
    and its application for small-area population estimation
• Software engineering solutions for spatial/geographical problems

Mitch was awarded his first degree in Physical Geography and Geology. He then took up a Ph.D. focused primarily on software development and undertaken in the early days of digital image processing. Coding in FORTRAN on PDP-11 and DEC VAX computers, he applied machine vision techniques and statistical classification tools to the identification of pollen grains viewed under a scanning electron microscope. This was pioneering work in what has now become the well-established field of automated Palynology and Paleopalynology (the study of fossil pollens and spores in ancient sediments).

After completing this Ph.D. his research career continued to pursue primary interests in geography and computing, leading on to a body of publications that have focussed on addressing the development and application of spatial technologies and spatial analyses to a wide range of social and environmental issues and concerns. This includes contributing significant methodological advancements in spatial analyses, particularly in the development and application of dasymetric areal interpolation techniques and dasymetric mapping. His recent research activites have become focussed on applying spatial accessibility modelling to a wide range of important services such as primary healthcare, public transport, childcare services and the provision of senior care homes. Once again, this work has included significant methodological contributions to the research literature, most notably in the development of a solution for the multi-modal two-step floating catchment area analysis of the spatial suppy-demand balance.

Mitch remains a keen and able programmer, and he continues to be actively engaged in engineering bespoke software solutions that support his research. However, any FORTRAN code has long since been replaced by C#, JavaScript, SQL, PL/pgSQL, Python, R, HTML/CSS and other modern programming languages.

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

Software Engineering: Current teaching activity is focussed on the C# Programming language (C#, WinForms, ADO.NET, WPF, etc). However, I also develop solutions in a range of other programming languages such as SQL, PL/pgSQL, HTML/CSS, JavaScript, PHP and Python. All these, and more, are used in support of both research activities and student projects.

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

Web Mapping: Design and implementation of websites that incorporate maps and other spatial elements. Coding mainly in HTML / CSS / JavaScript / jQuery. Client-side web mapping principles and technologies based on APIs such as GoogleMap, Leaflet, OpenLayers, and Turf.js. Server-side web mapping principles and technologies based on PHP scripting and GeoServer configuration. This includes 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.