New Advances in the Aggregation of Asymmetric Distances. The Bounded Case

Abstract

In 1981, J. Borsik and J. Dobos studied the problem of how to merge, by means of a function, a family of distances into a single one. To this end, they introduced the notion of distance aggregation function and gave a characterization of such functions. Later on, in 2010, the notion of distance aggregation function was extended to the framework of asymmetric distances by G. Mayor and O. Valero. Thus, asymmetric distance aggregation functions were introduced and a characterization of this new type of functions was also given. Concretely, the aforesaid characterization states that the functions which allow to merge a family of asymmetric distances into a single one are exactly those that are amenable, monotone and subadditive. In the present chapter we consider the problem of aggregating a family of bounded asymmetric distances. To this end, the notion of bounded asymmetric distance aggregation function is introduced and a full description of such functions is provided. The obtained results are illustrated by means of examples. Furthermore, the relationship between asymmetric aggregation functions and the bounded ones is discussed.