European Space Agency technology used to monitor satellites also is being used in a system that can remotely monitor offshore oil and gas facilities.

"Our 'Remote Intuitive Visual Operations' system is based upon years of ESA experience in the monitoring of satellites and the handling of emergency situations," Alexandre Van Damme of the French-Dutch start-up company Ergonomics Applied to Operations said. "It is an enhanced alarm monitoring system that sits on top of conventional distributed control systems used by offshore oil and gas exploration companies."

By combining thousands of monitored parameters into clusters, and applying a series of filtering algorithms, company officials said they provide a clean, graphical and intuitive overview of all emergency situations that can occur in an oil rig or similar offshore structure.

"Within seconds, the operator can identify where alarms originate from and, more importantly, how they are related to each other," thereby increasing the overall safety on the rigs said Van Damme, the co-inventor of the system that was developed at the ESA's incubation center in the Netherlands.

ESA officials said the system is currently under evaluation by several North Sea installations in Norwegian and Dutch waters.