A novel information fusion method using improved entropy measure in multi-source incomplete interval-valued datasets

Abstract

Multi-source data is a comprehensive data type that combines multiple sources of information or datasets. Compared to point-valued data, interval-valued data provides a more accurate representation of the uncertainty and variability associated with objects. In practical situations, data obtained from multiple sources may contain missing values for various reasons. Therefore, it is essential to develop multi-source information fusion technology in order to achieve information fusion or information extraction from multi-source incomplete data. This paper aims to explore the information fusion problem of multi-source incomplete interval-valued datasets. The primary contributions of this study involve utilizing the principle of statistical distribution and KL divergence to establish a metric for measuring the similarity between intervals. Firstly, this approach helps to reduce the problem of disregarding internal information within interval values, which can result in the loss of valuable information. Secondly, we establish an interval fuzzy similarity relation based on the mentioned concept of similarity among interval values. Moreover, we investigate the uncertainty measurement of incomplete interval-valued decision datasets and design an emerging information entropy fusion method. Finally, we comprehensively evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Experimental results indicate that the proposed approach has advantage over the maximum, minimum, mean, and information entropy fusion method based on tolerance relationship. In addition, the distance metric used in this article can improve the fusion classification effect compared to several common interval-valued distance measures.