Terrorism experts at St Andrews and Southampton universities are to research the domestic management of terrorist attacks in the UK.
The £250,000 study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, will also include the Potomac Institute in the US and consultants in fields ranging from criminology to disaster management.
Delegates from the government, the police, the armed forces and the private sector will be invited to a conference in September on the scope of the project.
Paul Wilkinson, director of St Andrews' Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, said the involvement of the private sector was particularly important.