Consensus reaching model for counter-intuitive in D–S evidence theory and application under 2-tuple linguistic representation

Abstract

In the information fusion field, Dempster–Shafer (D–S) evidence theory is a multi-source technology to solve the uncertain problems. With the aim of improving the decision accuracy, D–S evidence theory can make full use of information from different sources which are redundant and complementary. However, the influence caused by conflicting evidence during information fusion, named the counter-intuitive result, will confuse the selection of decision-makers (DMs). Inspired by the distance-based uncertainty measure, which is a typical technique used to manage uncertain information, the consensus reaching model is applied to overcome the influence caused by conflicting evidence in this paper. Considering the hesitant and uncertain of cognition, 2-tuple linguistic representation method is introduced to model and manage this vague decision information given by DMs. Finally, a consensus reaching model for counter-intuitive result in D–S evidence theory is put forward. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, the selection of plant protection machine suppliers is modeled as a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. According to the decision-making process, the best option for plant protection machine suppliers is obtained. The decision result indicates a strong correlation between the consistency value and conflicting value of evidence.