  This paper proposes a crowd dynamic macroscopic model grounded on microscopic
phenomenological observations which are upscaled by means of a formal
mathematical procedure. The actual applicability of the model to real world
problems is tested by considering the pedestrian traffic along footbridges, of
interest for Structural and Transportation Engineering. The genuinely
macroscopic quantitative description of the crowd flow directly matches the
engineering need of bulk results. However, three issues beyond the sole
modelling are of primary importance: the pedestrian inflow conditions, the
numerical approximation of the equations for non trivial footbridge geometries,
and the calibration of the free parameters of the model on the basis of in situ
measurements currently available. These issues are discussed and a solution
strategy is proposed.
