Combining belief functions taking into consideration error in judgement

Abstract

ABSTRACTDempster–Shafer (D–S) evidence theory is very efficient and widely used mathematical tool for uncertain and imprecise information fusion for decision making. D–S rule is criticised by many researchers as it gives illogical and counterintuitive results especially when the series of evidence provided by various experts are in a high degree of conflict. Various attempts have been made and several alternatives proposed to this rule. In this paper, a new alternative is proposed which considers the possibility of an error made by experts while providing evidence, calculates the error and incorporates in the revised masses. The validity and efficiency of the proposed approach have been demonstrated with numerous examples and the results are compared with already existing methods.HighlightsAn alternative method is proposed to handle the conflicting evidence.An Error In Judgement while gathering evidence is considered and incorporated before combining evidence.The method is simple and gives better and reasonable results than other previous methods when evidence conflicts