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The purpose of this paper is to explore the reasons behind the occurrence of serious accidents during interior firefighting operations of the German fire services despite numerous and significant safety improvements.

The paper is a case study relying on accident investigation reports from four accidents that happened in Germany between 2005 and 2016.

The study finds that the system of interior attack firefighting in Germany is a tightly coupled and complex system, as described by the normal accident theory, and that all four cases were caused by unanticipated interactions between components of the system and were therefore system accidents as described by the normal accident theory. This means that these accidents were ultimately caused by the properties of the system that make it susceptible to system accidents.

To prevent these accidents, there is a need to change the properties of the system that make it susceptible to system accidents.

The study identifies factors that make the system inherently dangerous. Hence, practical measures can be undertaken to counter these factors and make the system safer.

This study is the first application of the normal accident theory to the operations of the fire services in general, and it is the first theory-guided inquiry into accidents of the German fire services. The findings of this paper provide new explanations for accidents and new approaches to improve safety during interior attack firefighting operations.

This piece takes issue with the deployment of Trotsky’s idea of uneven and combined development (UCD) in the Anglophone discipline of International Relations (IR). It argues that this strand of thought makes a theory out of what is really a theorem (a deduction from an axiom), whilst forgetting about the original, actual theory of which it was part, Leon Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. IR U&CD, marketed in the discipline as International Historical Sociology (IHS), posits ‘the international’ as the field to which ‘the theory’ must be applied in order to open it up to social theorisation. This is analogous to the late-19th-century subjective turn in social science in which reality is presented as unfathomable, and rationality is merely subjective, an attribute of individual ‘actors’. ‘The international’ in this sense may be compared to ‘the market’ in neoclassical economics. Although it presents itself as Marxist, the U&CD/IHS project was part of a regressive conjuncture in Anglo-American, mainstream IR, as transpires from its attempt to position itself close to the ‘English School’ in IR. I conclude with a variation on Trotsky’s original theory, applying it to the ‘permanent counterrevolution’, of which the current war on terror is the latest stage.

The present paper aims to introduce a new methodology taking risk behavior of decision maker into account to fine‐tune the value of a risky public‐private‐partnership (PPP) project and the corresponding cost of capital based on the target rate of return set by the project sponsor and the degree of project risks.

The proposed methodology combines the cumulative prospect theory (CPT) to characterize the risk preference of the project sponsor and the Monte Carlo simulation to assess the project riskiness. The methodology requires a pre‐set target rate of return that will define the relative gains and losses for a prospect theory project sponsor. The application was illustrated using a build/operate/transfer toll road project as a case study.

As the project sponsor sets a greater target return, the probability of the project not meeting the target is accordingly greater. Given that losses have greater impact than gains on the decision, other things being equal, a higher target return leads to a higher value correction. It has also been demonstrated that the corresponding project's cost of capital can be up‐ or downadjusted depending on the project's riskiness which may result in a reverse preference to favor a higher risk scenario.

The methodology uses the CPT parameters that need to be further confirmed and validated if applied to value large risky projects like PPP investments.

The proposed methodology offers a different approach to correctly value a risky PPP project by extending the application of the cumulative prospect theory that well explains the irrationality of human decision behavior under risk into a financial decision‐making process. It takes the full benefit of simulation to understand project risks and also assists financial decision‐making.