Gordon Mitchell

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Verified

Gordon verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• BSc Environmental Science, PhD, MIEMA, CEnv
• Professor at University of Leeds

Precipitation from tropical cyclones (TCs) can cause massive damage from inland floods and is becoming more intense under a warming climate. However, knowledge gaps still exist in changes of spatial patterns in heavy TC precipitation. Here we define a metric, DIST30, as the mean radial distance from centers of clustered heavy rainfall cells (> 30 m...

Household water demand has increased dramatically in Kuwait over the last few decades, due to rapid population growth and changing lifestyles. Avoiding a water deficit through a supply-side approach has been the default strategy in Kuwait, yet this approach is unsustainable, associated with declining groundwater levels, and reliance on desalination...

Sustainable flood risk management (SFRM) has become popular since the 1980s. Many governmental and non-governmental organisations have been keen on implementing the SFRM strategies by integrating social, ecological, and economic themes into their flood risk management (FRM) practices. However, the justifications for SFRM are still somewhat embryoni...

China's Sponge City Programme (SCP) is one of the world's most ambitious sustainable urban drainage programmes. By 2030, Chinese cities must have 80% of their land drained by Blue–Green Infrastructure (BGI) to build critically needed flood resilience. Costs must be met from municipal and private finance, but BGI lacks the revenue streams of public...

Sustainable management of intact tropical peatlands is crucial for climate change mitigation, for biodiversity conservation and to support the livelihoods of local communities. Here, we explore whether sustainable fruit harvesting from Mauritia flexuosa palms could support these linked goals by increasing fruit production and incomes across the 2.8...

China's Sponge City Program (SCP) envisions a city's surface water management system to function like a sponge to absorb, store, infiltrate, and purify rainwater, and release it for reuse when needed. It emphasizes the use of natural and natural-engineering hybrid measures to mimic natural water cycle, thus offers Nature-Based-Solutions (NBS) to ur...

Household water demand has dramatically increased in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in the last few decades, due to rapid population growth and changing lifestyles. Growing demand has been met by increasing supply capacity, largely via new desalination plants and over-abstracting groundwater. The continuous investment in water supply to a...

Sustainable flood risk management (SFRM) has become popular since the 1980s. Many governmental and non-governmental organisations have been keen on implementing the SFRM strategies by integrating social, ecological and economic themes into their flood risk management (FRM) practices. However, justifications for SFRM are still embryonic and it is no...

By the 2050s, more than 120 million people are predicted to settle in the Pearl River Delta (PRD), which covers large coastal cities such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Cities in the PRD are vitally important to China in relation to their socio-economic contributions. From recent evidence, this strongly urbanized area is vulnerable to, and c...

Tropical cyclones [TCs] are a common natural hazard that have significantly impacted Oman. Over the period 1881–2019, 41 TC systems made landfall in Oman, each associated with extreme winds, storm surges and significant flash floods, often resulting in loss of life and substantial damage to infrastructure. TCs affect Omani coastal areas from Muscat...

Planning for community resilience to disasters is a process that involves co‐ordinated action within and between relevant organizations and stakeholders, with the goal of reducing disaster risk. The effectiveness of this process is influenced by a range of factors, both positively and negatively, that need to be identified and understood so as to d...

Environmental restoration and conservation challenges go beyond what can be financed publicly. There are significant opportunities for private investment in the delivery of public goods, benefitting both commercial organisations whose business relies on ecosystem services, as well as landowners, land managers and the general public. Thus, public-pr...

Spatial economic change is an energy justice issue (Bouzarovski & Simcock, 2017) - an essential consideration in how we choose to re-wire the economy for a carbon-free future. Nothing like the conscious system-wide change required has been attempted before. Rapid policy decisions risk embedding existing injustices or creating new ones, unless steps...

The 25 Year Environment Plans recognises that “our environment underpins our wellbeing and prosperity” and that improvements in our natural environment seek to improve social justice and provide a “country that works for everyone”. Internationally the UN Sustainable Development Goal seek a sustainable future for everyone and more specifically, “inc...

This paper reports on an investigation of the impact on air-quality of combinations of urban form development scenarios and vehicle fleet technology changes. The scenarios combine policies affecting urban land-use plans within the Cambridge Sub-Region of the UK, alongside technological changes within the projected vehicle fleet. Broadly, the scenar...

This case study implements long-term projections of domestic water demand for a UK water company, Thames Water. Projections of per household consumption (PHC) and households were combined to yield future demand. Regression models predicted PHC using the determinants of occupancy, property type, ethnicity and rateable value, drawing on 2006–2015 dom...

Whilst air pollution is a major problem in China, little is known about how it is distributed socially and how such distributions are changing over time. We use a fine-grained population census and air quality data for 2000 and 2010 to explore socio-spatial and temporal inequalities in air pollution for Beijing, using distributional analyses and sp...

Urban passenger travel is a major source of greenhouse gas emission. For China, understanding how passenger transport CO2 emission varies within cities is constrained by data availability, which limits development of mitigation policies and interventions targeted at specific areas or populations. We address this problem by applying an improved bott...

Environmental Justice (EJ) is concerned with the fair distribution amongst social groups of environmental quality. The EJ movement grew from concerns first expressed in 1970s United States, that hazards, such as toxic waste disposal facilities, were predominantly located in low income and nonwhite communities. However, despite the abundance of EJ s...

Poorer communities tend to be located within lower quality natural environments, experiencing greater environmental burdens and fewer environmental amenities. To date, analysis of environmental inequalities has focussed on pollution, with less attention given to natural environment benefits that support human wellbeing. Here, the ecosystem service...

A major challenge to reduce forest loss in the tropics is to incentivise conservation on private land in agricultural settings. Engaging private landowners in conservation schemes is particularly important along deforestation frontiers, such as in the southern Brazilian Amazon. While we know much about what motivates landowners to participate in sc...

Multi-hazard risk assessment is a major concern in risk analysis, but most approaches do not consider all hazard interactions when calculating possible losses. We address this problem by developing an improved quantitative model—Model for multi-hazard Risk assessment with a consideration of Hazard Interaction (MmhRisk-HI). This model calculates the...

Environmental pollution is a major problem in China, subjecting people to significant health risk. However, surprisingly little is known about how these risks are distributed spatially or socially. Drawing upon a large-scale survey conducted in Beijing in 2013, we examine how environmental hazards and health, as perceived by residents, are distribu...

In recent decades, society has been greatly affected by natural disasters (e.g. floods, droughts, earthquakes), and losses and effects caused by these disasters have been increasing. Conventionally, risk assessment focuses on individual hazards, but the importance of addressing multiple hazards is now recognised. Two approaches exist to assess risk...

This paper develops a systematic hazard interaction classification based on the geophysical environment that natural hazards arise from - the hazard-forming environment. According to their contribution to natural hazards, geophysical environmental factors in the hazard-forming environment were categorized into two types. The first are relatively st...

This paper develops a systematic hazard interaction classification based on the geophysical environment that natural hazards arise from – the hazard-forming environment. According to their contribution to natural hazards, geophysical environmental factors in the hazard-forming environment were categorized into two types. The first are relatively st...

Air quality in Great Britain has improved in recent years, but not enough to prevent the European Commission (EC) taking legal action for non-compliance with limit values. Air quality is a national public health concern, with disease burden associated with current air quality estimated at 29 000 premature deaths per year due to fine particulates, w...

We analyse qualitative data from home energy retrofit projects in England, looking beyond the boundaries of the building and its design for human behavioural influences on home energy use. We recognise that energy use is not solely determined by the decisions of building users or designers, but that intermediaries involved in energy retrofit may al...

Evaluating transport policy for cities in developing countries is often constrained by data availability that limits the use of conventional appraisal models. Here, we present a new ‘bottom-up’ methodology to estimate transport CO2 emission from daily urban passenger travel for Beijing, a megacity with relatively sparse data on travel behaviour. A...

Coastal megadeltas in Asia have emerged rapidly; their megacities are particularly stressed by urbanization and rapid population growth. In the Pearl River Delta, towns in coastal megacities, such as Hong Kong, experience severe land shortage, which has led to the installation of essential infrastructure in flood-prone areas. Floods from the storm...

It is commonly asserted that so-called compact development is the urban form most able to sustainably accommodate growth by reducing travel distances and conserving land, but credible supportive evidence remains limited. This study rigorously and realistically tested the relative performance of spatial options over the next 30 years for three disti...

Tour or trip chain based travel analysis has been a feature of transportation research for several decades, but has largely been the preserve of developed countries. Furthermore, the important associations between urban form and trip-chaining behaviour have received little attention. Based on detailed land use data and an activity dairy survey for...

Developing low carbon cities is a key goal of 21st century planning, and one that can be supported by a better understanding of the factors that shape travel behaviour, and resulting carbon emissions. Understanding travel based carbon emissions in mega-cities is vital, but city size and often a lack of required data, limits the ability to apply lin...

Over recent years a body of evidence has grown to suggest that East Asia is experiencing the effects of climate change. Allied to this is that coastal populations and economic assets are becoming more vulnerable to flood hazards. Flood vulnerability has increased owing to the combination of a number of human and physical variables: a) rapid coastal...

Over recent years a body of evidence has grown to suggest that East Asia is experiencing the effects of climate change. Allied to this is that coastal populations and economic assets are becoming more vulnerable to flood hazards. Flood vulnerability has increased owing to the combination of a number of human and physical variables: a) rapid coastal...

The Pearl River Delta (PRD) region has experienced rapid economic and population growth in the last three decades. The delta includes coastal megacities, such as Hong Kong. These low-lying urbanised coastal regions in the PRD are vulnerable to flood risks from unpredictable climatic conditions. These can result in increasing storm surges, rising se...

The Pearl River Delta (PRD) region has experienced rapid economic and population growth in the last three decades. The delta includes coastal megacities, such as Hong Kong. These low-lying urbanised coastal regions in the PRD are vulnerable to flood risks from unpredictable climatic conditions. These can result in increasing storm surges, rising se...

Intensive storms enhanced flooding is fast emerging as one of the biggest threats to urbanization in Asia. The need to manage this risk is critical for achieving a sustainable growth pattern. The authors study the Pearl River Delta (PRD) and propose a generic sustainable flood risk appraisal (SFRA) framework that can be used to benchmark flood risk...

In recent years, greater attention has been given to advancing the theory and practice of assessing risk from multiple hazards. Most approaches calculate multi-hazard risk by aggregating risk scores for individual hazards and ignore the combined exceedance probability of multiple hazards. We address this problem by developing a simple and practicab...

Intensive storms enhanced flooding is fast emerging as one of the biggest threats to urbanization in Asia. The need to manage this risk is critical for achieving a sustainable growth pattern. The authors study the Pearl River Delta (PRD) and propose a generic sustainable flood risk appraisal (SFRA) framework that can be used to benchmark flood risk...

Rapid economic development and urbanisation has taken place in coastal regions along the Pearl River Delta (PRD) in cities such as Hong Kong and Shenzhen, as well as in a range of smaller settlements, which now all face potentially major impacts from flooding. A changing global climate is causing rising sea levels and more extreme rainfall events t...

Coastal megadeltas in Asia have emerged rapidly; their megacities are particularly stressed by urbanization and rapid population growth. In the Pearl River Delta, towns in coastal megacities, such as Hong Kong, experience severe land shortage, which has led to the installation of essential infrastructure in flood-prone areas. Floods from the storm...

Deploying heating technologies, such as air-source heat pumps (ASHPs), can respond to the dual challenges of tackling fuel poverty and reducing carbon emissions from domestic energy consumption. In the UK, ASHP performance has been found to be below design levels. Elements of three strands of literature – innovation diffusion, environmental psychol...

This article analyses the current flood risk management practices in the Pearl River Delta (PRD), China. In the next four decades, 120 million people are expected to live in the region, which currently covers 11 major cities, and includes the coastal megacities formed by Hong Kong and Shenzhen. These populous low-lying coastal cities experience eme...

This article analyses the current flood risk management practices in the Pearl River Delta (PRD), China. In the next four decades, 120 million people are expected to live in the region, which currently covers 11 major cities, and includes the coastal megacities formed by Hong Kong and Shenzhen. These populous low-lying coastal cities experience eme...

Asia’s urbanized mega-deltas are experiencing increased incidences of flooding. Flood risk is increasing due to urban growth, which makes people more vulnerable and threatens economic assets, and due to factors that increase flood hazard, including reduced delta aggradation, subsidence though natural resource extraction, and climate change, includi...

In recent decades, the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region has experienced strong economic and population growth. By 2050 120 million people are expected to live in the region, which currently has eleven major cities, and the emerging mega-city formed by Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. The populous coastal cities and low lying flood plains in the PRD...

In recent decades, the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region has experienced strong economic and population growth. By 2050 120 million people are expected to live in the region, which currently has eleven major cities, and the emerging mega-city formed by Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. The populous coastal cities and low lying flood plains in the PRD...

This study attempts to answer one of the key questions facing academics and practitioners today viz. how far, and by what means, can towns and cities be planned for the future to promote social inclusivity, economic efficiency and environmental sustainability. A range of land-use and transport strategies have been devised and tested using a strateg...

Problem, research strategy, and findings: It is commonly asserted that so-called compact development is the urban form most able to sustainably accommodate growth by reducing travel distances and conserving land, but credible supportive evidence remains limited. This study rigorously and realistically tested the relative performance of spatial opti...

Growth in population and households, and lifestyle changes are factors placing water resources under increasing stress in some parts of the UK. The Code for Sustainable Homes (CSH), a government regulation defining performance standards for new dwellings, is one measure that may act to counter rising domestic water demand. One goal of the CSH is to...

We describe contemporaneous changes in environmental quality and social deprivation in English local authority districts over four decades, using secondary source GIS modelled data on environmentally intrusive development. The distribution of this development is described with respect to the Townsend material deprivation score, corroborated against...

Rapid economic development and urbanisation has taken place in coastal regions along the Pearl River Delta (PRD) in cities such as Hong Kong and Shenzhen, as well as in a range of smaller settlements, which now all face potentially major impacts from flooding. A changing global climate is causing rising sea levels and more extreme rainfall events t...

Land-use and transport systems are an important determinant of carbon dioxide emissions from urban regions. It is often asserted that urban compaction is the spatial policy best able to constrain travel and emissions, but evidence supporting this assertion is limited, particularly with respect to the combined emission from transport and land use. H...

The Niger Delta wetlands are changing rapidly, raising concern for the wetlands' health and for communities relying upon its ecosystem services. Knowledge on ecosystem service provision is important for effective ecosystem and livelihoods management, but is currently lacking for the Niger Delta. We synthesised literature and used the ‘Drivers–press...

Civil engineering solutions are routinely responsive to the places where those solutions are going to be built and the physical aspects of places are integral to good design. Other characteristics of a place, in particular its social or economic geography, will affect the design, implementation and impact of many civil engineering projects. This pa...

This study compares the spatial and temporal variability of water colour for fifteen sub-catchments of the River Nidd, northeast England, in 1986 and 2006/2007. Between 1986 and 2006/2007, mean annual water colour increased in all the sub-catchments. However, there was considerable variation in the increase, which ranged from 22 to 155%. Statistica...

Hong Kong’s economic success story could be swiftly undone if the government fails to respond to growing flood risks, argue Faith Chan, Adrian McDonald and Gordon Mitchell

Several recent studies have emphasised the need for a more integrated process in which researchers, policy makers and practitioners interact to identify research priorities. This paper discusses such a process with respect to the UK water sector, detailing how questions were developed through inter-disciplinary collaboration using online questionna...

Climate change will increase the frequency and severity of flooding in many parts of the world due to changes in the hydroclimatic regime and sea level rise. In the Pearl River Delta (PRD), a mega-deltaic region, over 30 million people will be at increased risk from coastal and urban flooding. This research uses comparative case studies of flood ma...

Complying with proposed Water Framework Directive (WFD) water quality standards for 'good ecological status' in England and Wales potentially requires a range of Programmes of Measures (PoMs) to control point and diffuse sources of pollution. There is an urgent need to define the benefits and costs of a range of potential PoMs. Water quality modell...

This paper explores the potential impact of alternative spatial development strategies on the sustainability of urban areas. A Land-Use and Transport Interaction model (TAMMS) is used to generate data regarding the performances of three specific development strategies for Tyne and Wear, UK which are then measured against the baseline of a 'Trend' o...

This paper presents the impact of road user charging (RUC) on vehicle emissions through application of traffic assignment and pollutant emission models. It presents results of an analysis of five RUC schemes on vehicle emissions in Leeds, UK for 2005. The schemes were: a 3 pound sterling inner ring road cordon charge; a double cordon with a 2 pound...

Planning the provision of a future water supply depends upon forecasts of likely demand. Existing forecasting techniques suffer from a lack of spatially relevant information on likely trends in the micro-components of demand. At a sub-regional level, current approaches also understate between-area variability. A static micro-simulation model is des...

Knowledge of future demand is essential for promoting sustainability in water resources, informing decisions over the allocation of water between people and the environment. Improved econometric models of non-household water demand are presented, which have been developed for the Yorkshire Water region, providing annual demand forecasts to the year...

Urban sources account for significant quantities of important diffuse pollutants, and urban watercourses are typically badly polluted. As well as toxic metals, hydrocarbons including PAHs, and suspended matter, priority urban pollutants include faecal pathogens and nutrients. Can urban watercourses be restored by sufficient reductions in pollution...

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) provides a coherent structure within which the problems of diffuse urban pollution can be effectively tackled and managed. The context of impermeable surface water quality within the terms of the Directive are outlined, and the pollutant sources and loadings associated with various urban land uses are identified....

Sustainable development requires that the goals of economic development, environmental protection and social justice are considered collectively when formulating development strategies. In the context of planning sustainable transport systems, trade-offs between the economy and the environment, and between the economy and social justice have receiv...

Traffic assignment, pollutant emission and dispersion models were applied to a major UK city so as to assess the air quality impacts of five road pricing schemes. Schemes were evaluated with reference to: exceedence of air quality standards for six pollutants; greenhouse gas emission; redistribution of pollution, an environmental justice concern; a...

The local impacts of industrial pollution can take many forms and—whilst uncertain in their scale, severity and distribution—are widely recognised. The question of who in society potentially experiences these impacts through living near to emission sources has been little explored, at least in the UK. This paper reports on a study carried out for t...

1. The overall aim of this research project was to consider the extent to which communities of people in Scotland living at different levels of deprivation also live in proximity to factors affecting environmental quality. The presumption is often made that there is coincidence between poor environmental quality and deprived communities in Scotland...

Non-point sources of pollution are difficult to identify and control, and are one of the main reasons that urban rivers fail to reach the water quality objectives set for them. Whilst sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) are available to help combat this diffuse pollution, they are mostly installed in areas of new urban development. However, SuDS mu...

This paper presents the results of the first national study of air quality in Britain to consider the implications of its distribution across over ten thousand local communities in terms of potential environmental injustice. We consider the recent history of the environmental justice debate in Britain, Europe, and the USA and, in the light of this,...

The impact of five different road user charge schemes on air quality in Leeds was assessed through application of traffic assignment, pollutant emission and atmospheric dispersion models. Modelled scenarios were assessed with reference to road network performance parameters, exceedence of air quality standards, greenhouse gas emission and spatial r...

The Traffic Emission Modelling and Mapping Suite (TEMMS) is a program designed to provide detailed estimates of vehicle emissions on urban road networks, and so act as a precursor to urban air quality modelling. TEMMS is a module of the “Quantifiable City”, a more extensive model designed to address questions relevant to urban sustainability. Withi...

A prototype decision support system for making informed decisions on urban development has been produced by the pan-European BEQUEST network. The overall aim is to enhance urban sustainability, the process of developing a built environment that meets peoples’ needs whilst avoiding unacceptable social or environmental impacts. The system, called the...

The concepts and visions of sustainable development that have emerged in the post-Brundtland era are explored in terms laying the foundations for a common vision of sustainable urban development (SUD). The described vision and methodology for SUD resulted from the activities of an international network called BEQUEST, funded by the European Commiss...