How can emerging risk areas learn from a consideration of past "Atypical Events" ?

Abstract : Some of the key points from iNTeg-Risk ERRA C4 will be described, with an emphasis on what points can be generalised to emerging risk in general. These will cover two main facets: The first line of discussion covers how many times does an atypical event need to occur before it is no longer considered atypical and how does one then convince an established industry to change it's view ? A succession of vapour cloud explosions are used to illustrate this point. The second part will look at a range of atypical events and examine common threads among the contributing factors that often are seen with atypical events. Managing these factors would be a starting point for managing generic unknown or emerging risks.