Case Study: GLOBE Observer achieves 50,000 new users and 100,000+ eclipse measurements with Liferay

A Mobile App for Citizen Scientists Drew 50,000 New Users

GLOBE Observer, part of the NASA-supported GLOBE Program, mobilizes students and citizen scientists to collect environmental data. For the 2017 North American solar eclipse the team faced a tight timeline, the need for an easy-to-develop solution that could scale for a large influx of users and data, and last-minute feature requests that had to be delivered within a week.

Using Liferay, developers rapidly added identity management and built a time-slider map visualization in under a week, then scaled the environment cost‑effectively. The effort brought in roughly 50,000 new users within weeks, produced over 100,000 measurements during the eclipse, generated strong media and NASA attention, and proved a scalable new model for public scientific engagement.

GLOBE Observer

Dave Overoye

Science Systems and Applications, Inc. (SSAI), Project Manager