Modernizing What Moves Duluth
How RBA transformed a 15-year-old ship-tracking application into a modern, scalable digital experience serving thousands of users across the Duluth maritime community.
Service
Application Modernization
Industry
Public Sector / Maritime / Tourism
Tech Stack
.NET, React, PostgreSQL, Cloudflare, AIS, OpenStreetMap, NOAA Maritime Charts
Key Terms
Application Modernization, Legacy Modernization, Custom Software Development, Cloud Architecture, Real-Time Data, Mapping, UX/UI, Data Integration
Quick Snapshot
Modernizing a 15-Year-Old Maritime Application for the Next Generation
Challenge
Harbor Lookout had become an important resource for the Duluth Maritime Museum and local ship-watching community, but its aging architecture made enhancements increasingly difficult. After roughly 15 years, more than 46 contributors, and years of accumulated technical debt, even relatively small changes could introduce new issues elsewhere in the application.
The client also had a growing list of feature requests that the legacy platform could no longer support efficiently.
Solution
RBA chose to move beyond incremental fixes and completely rebuild Harbor Lookout using a modern technology stack. The new platform combines .NET, React, PostgreSQL, cloud infrastructure, AIS vessel data, interactive maritime mapping, and improved authentication while preserving the familiar experience existing users valued.
The modernization also reduced reliance on expensive proprietary technologies and created a more flexible foundation for future development.
Impact
The rebuilt Harbor Lookout now delivers real-time vessel information, interactive mapping, automated alerts, and richer maritime data through a modern architecture designed to scale.
During peak tourism season, the application serves approximately 8,000 individual users per day, connecting residents, visitors, maritime enthusiasts, and museum staff with the ships moving through the Twin Ports.
“The hardest thing was accounting for all of the corner-of-the-box problems that we didn’t know about in the real-world model of what ships do.”
Process
RBA began by looking beyond the existing codebase and understanding how Harbor Lookout was actually used. That meant examining the client’s feature requests, identifying limitations in the legacy architecture, and working closely with Maritime Museum stakeholders to understand the behaviors and edge cases the new platform would need to support.
The team then redesigned the application around a modern architecture that could improve performance, security, maintainability, and cost efficiency.
Throughout development, close collaboration with the client created a feedback loop that allowed RBA to adjust features based on how people interacted with the system in the real world, not simply how those workflows appeared in technical requirements.
Legacy Application Modernization
Interactive Maritime Mapping
Real-Time AIS Data
UX and Experience Design
Cloud Architecture
Automated Vessel Alerts
Solution
The Harbor Lookout platform was rebuilt primarily using .NET and React, with PostgreSQL replacing more costly proprietary database technology. The application was deployed in the cloud while remaining easy for developers to run locally for testing and debugging. Cloudflare caching was introduced to support the performance demands of approximately 80,000 individual map tiles used across multiple zoom levels.
RBA also reimagined how maritime information is displayed. Harbor Lookout combines OpenStreetMap geographic data with NOAA maritime charts, live AIS telemetry, vessel information, schedules, images, cargo details, and human-entered context. Ships are displayed as scaled outlines reflecting their actual position and orientation rather than simple map points, giving users a more accurate representation of harbor activity.
Interactive Data Driven Map
Interactive Mobile Design
Cloud Architecture
Services
Custom Software Development
Engineered modern web application
UX/UI Design
Preserved and improved usability
Cloud Architecture
Improved scalability and performance
Impact
Harbor Lookout now operates on a modern foundation designed to support continued growth, feature development, and changing user needs. The modernization improved security, lowered infrastructure costs, enhanced performance, expanded system capabilities, and gave the Maritime Museum a more sustainable platform for serving the Duluth maritime community.
8K
Daily users during peak season
46+
Developers contributed across the application’s history
80k
Map tiles supported across multiple zoom levels
From Local Tool to Modern Digital Platform
Harbor Lookout demonstrates what application modernization can accomplish when organizations look beyond the technology itself.
RBA helped transform a 15-year-old application into a modern digital platform while preserving the local knowledge, human relationships, and familiar experience that made Harbor Lookout valuable in the first place.
The result is more than a rebuilt application. It is a scalable foundation designed to keep evolving alongside the community it serves.
RBA helps organizations modernize legacy applications by connecting strategy, experience, data, and engineering into solutions built for what comes next.