The Institute’s first major research bid application was made in November 2009 under the EU Framework Seven Security Programme.  The Huddersfield-led bid, entitled ‘Limiting European  Violence and Terrorist Acts by Guiding Resources’ or LEVERAGE, for short, is concerned with developing models for assessing and evaluating terrorism risks as they affect Europe’s critical infrastructure. 

The proposal seeks to  develop and implement a multi-perspective approach to terrorism risk by bringing together environmental criminology (as applied to blocking terrorist opportunities) (Hirschfield and Ekblom), Investigative Psychology, to understand the mindset of offenders (Canter), political sociology to understand  the rationale, organisational structures and support for terrorist groups(McAuley)  and generic risk assessment from the health field (Heyman). Partners include the EU Satellite Centre (Spain), the Centre for Strategic Communication Studies (Turkey), the Department of Special Engineering (disaster management) University of Zilnia(Slovakia) and scenario planners from a Shell Spin-off company, GBN Ltd.  The outcome will be known by the end of  March 2010.