Med-core
A Python engine and QGIS plugin. It translates bodies, terrain and effort into iso-effort maps that researchers can use and cities can scale. It also supports cohort analyses.
A Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship
Barcelona · 2026—2028REACHRethinking Accessibility through an Embodied, Human-Centred Approach
Every body.
A different
city.
REACH measures urban accessibility in human effort, not only in distance or time — so that cities can be planned for the people who actually live in them.
01 / The idea
Fifteen minutes.
For whom?
We measure cities in metres and minutes.
People experience them in their own terms.
A walking radius draws a neat circle. Real life rarely does. Age, fitness, terrain and the things we carry all change how far we can comfortably go.
REACH — Rethinking Accessibility through an Embodied, Human-Centred Approach — asks what happens when the person becomes part of the measure.
The framework behind REACH
Urban Ergonomics.
A city understood through the capabilities of the human body.
Urban Ergonomics reframes accessibility as a relationship between people and urban conditions. It brings age, fitness, terrain and everyday effort into the picture — with MED as a measure of that effort.
Explore the measure ↓02 / The measure
The person becomes
the measure.
The Metabolic Equivalent of Distance (MED) expresses distance in physiological effort. One MED-metre represents the effort of a reference body walking one flat metre. Equal MED means equal effort — while the distance changes.
MED = R × d
MEDMetabolic Equivalent of Distance
RIntensity relative to the reference body
dDistance in flat-ground metres
01 Body-normalised02 Terrain-aware03 Mode-comparable04 GIS-native05 Scalable by design
03 / Demo
Try the measure.
Set a body and a street. See how a reference 400-metre walking budget translates into distance at the same physiological cost.
Your effort, translated.Illustrative model
1.00×
Intensity vs. reference body
400 mReach at 400 MED-m
500MED-m for a 500 m walk
ILLUSTRATIVE REACH / 400 m
Reference walking radius400 m
This body · this street400 m
This matches the reference body behind the 400 m standard.
A simplified version of the REACH model. Harris–Benedict · MET correction · Minetti slope · surface & load. Walking speed: 4.8 km/h. Reference: male, 35 years, 80 kg, 175 cm, moderate fitness, flat asphalt, no load. The graphic is schematic; this demonstration is not a validated personalised assessment.
04 / Research
Three strands of work.
Evidence in motion
Testing MED predictions against GPS-tracked activity spaces in Barcelona, across different bodies and demographic groups.
Urban Ergonomics
A framework to reveal where conventional standards overestimate access — and whose everyday experience is being overlooked.
05 / News
Project updates.
The REACH website is live
urbanergonomics.eu introduces the project, the Urban Ergonomics framework and an interactive demonstration of the Metabolic Equivalent of Distance.
REACH starts at ISGlobal Barcelona
The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship begins at ISGlobal Barcelona, with a secondment at TU Delft.
REACH is funded
The proposal is selected for funding under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships, scoring 99.4/100 and ranking in the top 1% of evaluated proposals.
06 / People
The research team.
Architect and urban planner. PhD, National Technical University of Athens, 2023. MSCA postdoctoral researcher at ISGlobal Barcelona. Researching physiological-effort accessibility. Related patent granted in Greece; European and US applications pending.
Payam Dadvand
Research Professor, ISGlobal.
Climate, Air Pollution, Nature and Urban Health.
ISGlobal Barcelona Barcelona / Main hostAchilleas Psyllidis
TU Delft.
Urban Analytics.
TU Delft The Netherlands / Secondment